Colombia: The First Single-Origin Coffee

A story of tradition versus experimentation

Colombia’s Andes mountains provide near perfect conditions for Arabica. Their many nooks and crannies produce incredibly diverse types of coffee.

When it comes to coffee, we’re in awe of Colombia for at least two reasons: its reliable consistency and its power to dazzle with nuance and complexity. 

With the high Andes altitude and its equatorial climate, Colombia is in many ways the ideal coffee-growing landscape—specifically for the Arabica species used in specialty coffee. Today, Colombia is the third largest coffee producer in the world after Brazil and Vietnam. Unlike the latter two, which grow a large amount of Robusta, Colombia has only ever grown Arabica, beloved for its greater complexity and natural sugars. Many Colombian regions harvest two seasons a year, so the country’s supply of coffee is always fresh. With the help of our excellent exporter partners, including Caravela and Azahar, we can buy high-quality traceable, organic coffee for our Hayes Valley Espresso and cold brews year-round. And because our partners track every bag that comes to them from their growers, they have helped us isolate special lots to feature as single origins, so we can showcase Colombia’s gorgeous variety. 

Much of the coffee we buy from Colombia is certified organic, with many farmers growing coffee in a way that’s mindful of the environment and wildlife.

Nostalgia Perfected

Thanks to its long focus on quality as well as good marketing, Colombian coffee is practically synonymous with the cozy roasted notes of the “classic” coffee profile—a taste that only emerged in the 1950s with the new mass marketing for the drink. We love these coffees partly for nostalgic reasons—they remind us of the coffees we grew up drinking. But we also look for a little more complexity in the cup.

“When choosing coffee from Colombia, we’re generally looking for vanilla, light brown sugar, and cocoa notes as well as acidity that’s like a fresh apple or apple cider,” says Pele Aveau, the Colombia coffee buyer for our green coffee team who recently traveled there. “Colombian coffee also tends to have a rich, dense body without being too heavy.” 

Some specialty roasters might find Colombia less exciting than other origins, but we disagree. “Producing coffee is a craft in Colombia that’s been honed over years and years and years,” says Aveau. “We celebrate the consistency.” Plus, a new wave of experimentation there is generating buzz—and even a little controversy. 

Early TV commercials marketed Colombian coffee showing fictional farmer, Juan Valdez, carefully picking ripe coffee cherry on his mountain farm.

A Brief History

It’s thought that Jesuit priests brought coffee to Colombia in the 1700s. By the 1800s, the country grew enough coffee to export, with the first shipment going to the United States in 1835. In 1927, the growers organized themselves into a nonprofit business association called Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia (FNC). Today the organization has more than 500,000 members and remains a major force in the Colombian coffee economy. From its start, it has defended coffee growers’ interest when it comes to drafting policy and provided research to improve coffee quality. It has also successfully promoted Colombian coffee internationally.

Enter Juan Valdez

In 1958, the FNC launched a series of marketing campaigns that helped position Colombian coffee as the world’s first single origin. Featuring a fictional coffee farmer, Juan Valdez—and the tagline “The richest coffee in the world”—the ads depicted Colombian coffee as a high-quality alternative to mass-market coffees of no specified origin, such as Maxwell House. 

The commercials quickly became a fixture in print and on television, evolving over decades to reflect trends in coffee connoisseurship. In the 1970s, perhaps as a nod to the “back to the land” ethos of the times, Juan was shown hand-harvesting his coffee cherry in the cool, sunny mountain air and drying them under the sun after being carefully washed. In the 1980s, he appeared as an apparition in fancy supermarkets, assuring well-heeled American yuppies that they were buying the right coffee. In the 1990s, with the rise of second-wave coffee sometimes baroque coffee concoctions, Juan showed up in commercials touting Colombian coffee as a simple, sophisticated alternative. 

Colombia’s landscape can be challenging to traverse.

Going Beyond Juan

In certain ways, the Juan Valdez campaign has proven too successful. Today, some think Colombian coffee only comes in one flavor. In truth, the country’s coffees have incredible variety.

First, because of its many Arabica cultivars. Where much of the coffee world grows just two (Typica and Bourbon), Colombia is also home to Caturra, Maragogype, Tabi, Castillo, and one called Colombia, to name only the most important. Then there is the country’s unmatched terroir. There are five major coffee-growing zones, which encompass nineteen different regions, most along the Andes Mountains. With the Andes in the south of the country branching off into three sections as they go north, the landscape is full of nooks and crannies. Because of varying sun exposure, soil, and humidity levels, coffee from one side of a mountain can taste totally different than coffee from the other side. Depending on where a site falls, you also might also have the influence of the Pacific Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, or the Amazon River, among other water sources. When you put all of these factors together, you find an incredible number of microclimates to explore. 

Finally, Colombia’s best coffee farmers are also expert processors. Until 2015, the FNC would not allow any coffee that was not fully washed to be exported. This—along with a challenging landscape that makes travel difficult—created a tradition of smallholder farmers processing their own coffee with deep attention to detail. (In other parts of the world, smallholders often bring their raw coffee cherry to washing stations where it is purchased and processed.) 

Coffee processed three different ways: Washed, honey, and natural.

Tradition Versus Trends

With the relaxing of the FNC rules in Colombia, some producers are exploring processing methods other than washed. This type of experimentation is making some traditionalists nervous. Many of the methods are also notoriously harder to control than wet processing, so some experiments have led to lots of spoiled coffee. The trials that have gone well, however, are generating huge amounts of interest. 

“Colombia is hallowed ground for coffee lovers,” says Aveau. “People get upset about the implication of fads.” At Blue Bottle, we’re not quick to embrace fleeting trends, but we also don’t think an origin needs to stay static. Instead, we believe in celebrating all that Colombia does well.