Editorial · Competition
What Jack Simpson served to win the 2025 WBC
The World Coffee Championships named Jack Simpson of Axil Coffee Roasters the 2025 World Barista Champion in Milan. Axil’s own post-championship tasting guide identifies Jamison Savage’s Finca Deborah Aether as the espresso coffee and Jhonatan Gasca’s Finca Zarza Papayo as the milk-course coffee. The Finca Zarza storefront listing was sold out when we checked every variant on August 21, 2026. Aether is also currently unavailable.
Published May 16, 2026 · Updated August 21, 2026 · By Cherrybook editorial
What the sources establish
The championship organizer is the authoritative source for the result. Axil, Simpson’s roaster and employer, is the first-party source for the coffees used in the routine. Its tasting-session listing explicitly calls Aether and the Finca Zarza Papayo the exact championship coffees. That corrects an earlier version of this guide, which mislabeled a different Finca Deborah release as the exact espresso coffee. The Papayo remains part of the sourced routine record, but not the live buy list while its official page is sold out.
The title also caps a documented three-year arc: Simpson placed third in Athens in 2023 and second in Busan in 2024 before taking the 2025 title in Milan, with Finca Deborah coffees in each of the last two routines.
The analogs below are editorial comparisons, not competition substitutes. We label them by what stays constant and what changes. Roaster tasting notes and process descriptions remain first-party product claims, while Cherrybook Index summarizes a broader mix of evidence.
The current field guide
Best washed Papayo analog
COLuis Carlos Guzmán CruzHuilaPapayowashedCBI50$2.29/oz
Right Side's Luis Guzmán Papayo comes from a different producer in Huila and uses a washed process. It is not a substitute for the exact Finca Zarza lot. At $2.29/oz, it is a useful varietal comparison because farm, roaster, and process all change in clearly disclosed ways.
Best processed Papayo value
COBeto NaravezHuilaPapayoCBI51$1.92/oz
Mad Priest's Beto Naravez Papayo is another Huila analog, this time anaerobic washed. At $1.92/oz, it is the lowest-cost Papayo route in this field guide. Brew it beside the washed Right Side lot to compare process, while remembering that the producer and roaster also differ.
Build a useful home flight
Treat Papayo as a separate flight
Two current entries use the Papayo name across different producers and processes. The washed and anaerobic-washed analogs help show why a cultivar label alone never explains the whole cup.
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