The Global Coffee Awards announced its US and Canada edition winners and one Phoenix coffee shop snagged gold.
The GCA recognizes the best specialty coffee roasters and producers in the world. A panel of judges blind taste the coffees submitted and choose the winners, awarding them gold, silver or bronze seals with a trophy to the gold award winners.
The competition categories included: Filter coffee, espresso, flat white-dairy and flat white-alternative milk.
Phoenix coffee shop Moxie Coffee wins best coffee
Moxie Coffee won gold in the filter coffee, single origin experimental subcategory for its Letty Bermudez. Grown by Diego Bermudez at Finca El Paraíso in Colombia, and named after his daughter, the Geisha varietal is produced using bio-reactors in the fermentation process, which results in cleaner flavors. According to Moxie, Letty offers notes of yellow fruits, peach, floral and milk tea.
Matt Heltzel founded Moxie Coffee Co., named after the courage it took to open it, in 2021. Heltzel started roasting coffee in a West Bend Poppery (a popcorn popper his friend helped modify into a roaster) in 2011.
In a social media post he wrote that he set off a few alarms but “I was entranced,” to the point that he raised money to travel to Honduras where he learned all about coffee from farming to roasting processes. That’s where he fell in love with coffee and finding “diamond in the rough” coffees or “uncommon discoveries.” Today, at his coffee shop, he wrote that they “go to painstaking lengths to find coffees from uncommon producers using uncommon methods to produce UNCOMMON COFFEE, coffees you can’t get your hands on most other places. Coffees that tell a story. Coffees that CONNECT consumers here in Phoenix and across the world to producers who are extraordinary in their craft and are creating beautiful experiences by taking pride in what they do.”
Visit Moxie Coffee Co.
Heltzel has maintained transparency about where he sources his coffee. He gives full information, including origin, preparation and tasting notes on Moxie’s Instagram and website.
Moxie Coffee Co., along with other gold winners advanced to the finals to compete for best in the world competition, which will take place at Producer & Roaster Forum El Salvador on March 26 and 27, 2026.,
“We’ve been so focused for years on trying to make our coffees stand up to the rest of the country/world and I’ve been feeling so good about the progress we’ve made,” Heltzel said in a statement to The Republic. “It feels really good to have so many hours pay off! Just really excited for a chance to compete for worlds best roaster too. I feel really confident we have a chance.”
Details: 4626 N. 16th St., Suite 101, Phoenix. moxiecoffeeco.com.
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