style="text-transform: uppercase;">Kota Kinabalu: With close to two years of experience working as a barista at a local café in Plaza 333, Ryan Liew emerged champion of the Borneo Latte Art Competition held in conjunction with the Borneo Coffee Festival here, Sunday. The 19-year-old from Penampang, walked home with RM2,000, a trophy, certificate and sponsorship prizes after beating 12 other contestants.

The event held at Suria Sabah Shopping Complex was organised for the third time this year by Borneo Café Alliance, a subsidiary unit under the Federation of Sabah Industries.

"I was planning to draw a rose on my latte, but then I noticed the judging criteria this year is a bit different from the previous years, this time they focused more on creative arts," said Liew.

He said that gave him the spontaneous idea of coming up with a Pegasus drawing and was lucky to win this time around.

"This is my third time joining similar competitions, last year I got third place in the Borneo Latte Art Competition," he said, adding that he plans to get his driving licence with the prize money.

Liew who plans to be a professional barista someday encourages others to pick up the skills as it is a positive work which is about art and helps one to discover oneself. Second and third place went to Eric Chin and Allen Ku, respectively.

Meanwhile, Borneo Coffee Alliance Chairman Jackz Lee said the event was aimed at showing to the public that coffee has so much potential.

"This Borneo Coffee Festival is not only about brewing and drinking coffee, we also hope farmers take part.

"We want to introduce Sabah's local coffee bean throughout the world, not only Robusta like Tenom, Arabica coffee also very potential in Sabah," he said.

The event also saw the Borneo Brewer Cup Competition held for the first time in conjunction with the festival.

First place went to Jackson Liew, while Einstein Pong and John Wong, won second and third, respectively.

The champion for both competition each took home with them RM2,000, trophy, certificates and sponsorship prizes, while the rest were given trophies, certificates and sponsorship prizes.

Lee went on to explain that the judging criteria for the Brewer Competition focuses on skills in brewing and how participants are able to bring out the best flavour, aroma and character of the coffee. While judging criteria for Latte Art is more on visual and technical, in addition to how contestants extract coffee while keeping cleanliness.

"Over the past years, the quality and standard of latte produced is so much better," said Lee.