Cartel Roasting Co wins silver at the Global Coffee Awards

Cartel Roasting Co. won two silver medals at the 2026 Global Coffee Awards for Sonoran Sun, a canned cold brew, part of a win for two Arizona roasters announced in September.

The Tempe-based roaster took silver in the Ready to Drink Overall and Ready to Drink Blend categories for Sonoran Sun, and an honourable mention in Filter: Single Origin Experimental for a washed Guatemalan lot called Finca La Reserva Anaerobic Honey. Phoenix's Moxie Coffee also placed, giving the Phoenix metro area two winners in a competition more often dominated by the kind of direct-trade specialty names that get the national press, such as Devoción in New York.

Cartel has been judged before: a bronze medal for its Ethiopia Dale lot and an award for a blend called Forty Eight in last year's edition. Neither of this year's wins came from the espresso or filter categories that usually decide roasting reputations, which is itself part of the story: canned cold brew has become a category a mid-sized roaster can win on its own terms.

Two silver medals for a can, not a cup — proof that ready-to-drink now has its own podium.

Fifteen stores built on wholesale

Jason and Amy Silberschlag founded Cartel in 2008; the roaster now runs 15 cafés across Arizona and California, supplying wholesale accounts alongside its own retail counters. Sonoran Sun and a nitro line called Night Vision are the company's push into canned, ready-to-drink coffee, a category that has grown faster than bagged beans across much of the US specialty market.

“Our production team is the silent engine behind our company — they're always working as a cohesive team to tweak and fine-tune every coffee,” chief executive Jesse Pangburn said of the win.

A crowded field of regional awards

The Global Coffee Awards run as a series of blind-judged regional heats — Asia, Africa, MENA and the Americas among them — feeding into a world championship; this year's was held in El Salvador in March, where Lithuania's Huracán Coffee took the overall title. The format has multiplied in recent years alongside rivals such as the industry's procurement guidelines, part of a broader push to standardise how roasters are judged and bought from.

For a mid-sized roaster like Cartel, a medal in a ready-to-drink category is a narrower claim than a cupping-table trophy — but a repeat appearance on the list, two years running, is the harder number to argue with.