When we talk about coffee, we talk about regions. What are coffee-growing regions?
It’s simple – a coffee-growing region is the area where coffee is grown. You can talk about regions in different ways:
- global coffee-growing regions (for example, Central America, South America, Asia, East or West Africa, Arabian Peninsula)
- regions defined by the borders of a particular country, or
- regions within a country
Depending on the roaster you’re purchasing coffee from, they may mark the bags of coffee with the name of the region.
For instance, when you buy coffee in Colombia, you’ll see the names of the coffee-growing region on bags of specialty coffee. Those names are the names of the department, which is the state or province. Some names you’ll frequently see are: Quindío, Cundinamarca, Tolima, Nariño, Huila, Santander, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Antioquia.
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Why should you care about coffee regions in Colombia?
Depending on how and where coffee was grown, processed and handled, the region it came from can be incredibly important.
Each region produces coffee that has different profiles. Conditions such as altitude, climate, soil, and processing traditions change the tastes you get in the cup.
Therefore, certain regions produce coffee with more body or more acidity, while in another region coffee may be sweeter or fruity.
Those factors can make a coffee from Ethiopia radically different than one from Indonesia, and they both can be incredibly different than one from Brazil.
And yes, it is possible to slurp coffee and detect what particular area of a particular country it’s from.
To find out more about regions and why coffee varies in each area, read 3 Reasons Why you Should Care About Coffee Growing Regions.
How many coffee-growing regions are there in Colombia?
In Colombia there are 5 main coffee growing areas and 19 sub-regions. That’s a lot of regions to go over. For this article we’ll break them down into 4 main areas.
North
Departments: Santander, Magdalena, Cesar
Facts about this region:
- Santander – it is thought that coffee arrived in Colombia through Santander. Coffee often has chocolate notes.
- Sierra Nevada – often nutty with chocolate notes, this area has many indigenous groups that use naturally organic methods. Coffees with less acidity but more body.
Central North and Central South
Departments: Antioquia, Caldas, Chocó, Risaralda, Quindío, Cundinamarca, and North of Tolima.
Why the coffee is different: It’s hard to generalize about such a huge region, but coffees here tend to produce that typical Colombian coffee taste – sweet coffees with a hint of panela (raw sugar, or caramel) and medium-high body.
Facts about this region: Antioquia is the second-biggest producing region in Colombia, and Tolima the third.
South
Departments: Cauca, Huila and Nariño.
Why the coffee is different
This area is closer to the equator, so coffee is grown at higher altitudes where the temperature is lower. At night the temperature lowers, associated with relatively high altitudes, slow how fast the coffee beans ripen. That helps develop the sugar in the beans and give it higher levels of acidity.
It’s a region particularly associated with quality, producing higher quality coffees that are known for their impressive acidity.
Facts about this region
- Cauca has Indigenous communities and African Colombian communities that use their traditional methods of processing coffee. There’s also a lot of rich volcanic soil and the coffee has fruity and sweet notes.
- Huila is an important coffee producing area in terms of production and quality. People look to this area for good specialty coffee, and many growers have won local and national competitions. Huila Received Denomination of Origin in 2013. (Denomination of Origin is a legal designation that guarantees product authenticity for customers. DO coffee complies with the processes and quality requirements associated with that denomination).
- Nariño is just about on the equator, so the way the sun shines in the high mountains creates coffees with higher acidity and intense aromas.
East
Departments: Arauca, Casanare, Meta, and Caquetá.
Facts about this region: Just 5,500 producers grow coffee on about 10,500 ha of land. Many of these producers have been hard hit by the internal conflict.
Why the coffee is different: In general, there’s a similar climate and results in the cup as the northern region.
If you’ve read up to this point, I can tell you’re interested in deepending your coffee knowledge. Check out our online coffee courses that can help you learn the fundamentals of coffee in record time. To get an idea of what’s involved with growing and processing coffee, check out From Coffee Plant to Your Coffee Cup. If you want to learn to evaluate and discuss coffee quality the way professional coffee tasters do, check out Taste Coffee like a Pro.
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