Colombia Coffee

Colombia is the world’s most spectacularly diverse coffee country. Each fall, we await the arrivals from the southern departments of Nariño, Cauca, and Tolima; famous for their rich coffees. We’re proud to feature unique offerings of traceable family farms from distinct microregions, Organic certified organizations, and in one case, a very unique and forward-thinking boutique estate. These coffees are marshmallow-y thick, deeply bright, and distinctively complex. Some of the jammiest and aromatically intense fully washed profiles available. See below for currently available, and upcoming, coffees by department.

Learn About Colombia’s Departments

Nariño

Nariño is Colombia’s southwestern-most department. Nariño’s Andean range contains the spectacular Galeras volcano and the broad plateau-filled landscapes around Pasto, as well as the denser slope-filled area of La Unión in the north, both of which are some of the best-known areas for quality, where coffees are syrupy sweet and bright like grape candy, full of red and tropical fruits, and juicy acid. Nariño is one of Colombia’s front-line regions in the effort to entice remote and endangered growers to switch from coca to coffee. In the past 8 years there has been a gradual expansion of traceable access to buyers of single-farm and multi-farm blends with verifiable farm gate prices. The coffees themselves, already gifted by their location and care, are gradually raising the bar each year.

Tolima

Tolima is one of Colombia’s less-inhabited departments. Farms here tend to be larger as a result, and are more likely to be organic, since farm and forest management often overlap for more remote and spread out communities. Tolima’s coffee is often herbaceous and nuanced, with malic acidity and hoppy complexity. Tolima is also an historically opaque region for coffee. The department sits right between Huila, Cauca, and Valle de Cauca, three of Colombia’s most accessible coffee regions, and yet for decades Tolima’s dense and remote landscapes were largely inaccessible due to the occupation of Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), perpetrators of Latin America’s longest-running armed conflict. Since the national peace accords in 2016 between the FARC and Colombia’s federal government, access to Tolima has increased dramatically. Many farmer groups could be visited for the first time, and coffees could be created collaboratively.

Cauca & Valle de Cauca

These neighboring departments, like Nariño to the south, run from the Andes to the pacific coast, and the producer groups surrounding the Popayán, the department’s iconic capital city, include some of the south’s most approachable nougaty and mango-sweet coffees. In the case of Granja La Esperanza, one of Colombia’s most progressive estates, the coffees we carry each year showcase a broad spectrum of possibilities.

Colombia Crown Jewels

We will have more Crown Jewels from this origin in December.