Nariño Coffee Region Information_Is Nariño Coffee Delicious_How to Brew Nariño Coffee Beans

Nariño Coffee Beans

Nariño, pronounced "na-REE-nyo," lies in southwestern Colombia, bordering Ecuador and facing the Pacific Ocean. Its best coffee areas cluster around the Galeras Volcano, an active volcano whose crater you can often see puffing thick smoke and that rises to more than 4,000 meters. Around this volcano lie premium high-altitude coffee regions.

The growing areas around Galeras Volcano sit at 1,800 to 2,300 meters. Although the equator passes through the province, the high altitude and the moderating rivers keep the annual average temperature at only 18°C to 24°C, while the day-night difference often exceeds 15°C. That swing is one of the favorable conditions for growing exceptional coffee. The Finca Villa Maria lot we recently acquired comes from this region. Since 2000, Nariño coffee has earned a reputation as premium specialty coffee from southern Colombia, and the launch of the Cup of Excellence (CoE) national competition in 2005 made the Nariño name even more famous.

Nariño coffee is harvested successively through July. By August the dry season ends, and together with the monomodal rainfall pattern this lets the region enter an intensive flowering period after the first rain of September. That usually means the main cherry harvest concentrates from April to July of the following year, with the ultra-high-altitude areas continuing into August. Farmers carry out the first stage of post-processing at their small wet mills right after harvest, running through November, when the second stage of drying, hulling, and grading is completed. They prepare for export in January, and consuming countries begin seeing the coffee on the market from March. The Villa Maria batch FrontStreet Coffee currently carries is fresh, in-season coffee delivered straight from the producing region following exactly this cycle.

While coffee can be harvested twice in many parts of Colombia, Nariño has only one harvest. Its only rainy season runs from October to May, immediately followed by the dry season of June, July, and August. Fortunately, warm air currents carry moisture up from the valley during the day, so cold nights produce more condensation and higher humidity. That gives the coffee trees moisture through the dry season and helps them survive the cold nights.

This microclimate, shaped by the steep terrain, lets coffee trees at altitudes of 1,600 to 2,300 meters in Nariño survive cold or extremely dry seasons. It is the signature of Nariño's high-altitude estates: the coffee has sufficient absorbable water, suitable growing temperatures (the temperature swing here can exceed 15°C), adequate sunlight, and the distinctive terrain winds that together form flavors unlike other regions. We call these the four elements, or WTSW: water, temperature, sunlight, and wind.

Compare the two maps below. The left shows topographical elevation, where you can see the towering mountains in the south, and reveals that most Nariño coffee areas exceed 1,600 meters. The right circles several of Colombia's important specialty coffee provinces.

In the Nariño coffee region, farmers use simple cherry-processing machines at home. They depulp immediately after harvest and then carry out fermentation. The middle photo shows the power of the dry season, while the right photo shows the farm's nursery area.

Finca Villa Maria is a domestic winner in Colombia's Cup of Excellence with outstanding quality. Nariño had a good harvest last year, producing many excellent lots, including the CoE second-place lot that we successfully bid on. We cup every lot individually before putting it on sale. All of them belong to what we call "direct relationship coffee."

Although Villa Maria's harvest was slower, it still advanced to the domestic winners on the strength of its quality. Unfortunately, a slight score difference kept it out of the international competition. After receiving the samples and cupping them, we could not help feeling it had been treated unfairly, because it clearly had the quality of at least 86 points. The domestic winner was penalized for insufficient maturity because the samples submitted were overly fresh. It was the dark horse everyone coveted, and we feel fortunate to have won the bid. With bean prices rising, the price is also relatively reasonable compared with competition beans.

FrontStreet Coffee: a roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but a diverse range of beans, where you can find both famous and lesser-known lots. They also provide online shop services at https://shop104210103.taobao.com

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

To get to know Colombia's central regions, start with FrontStreet Coffee's washed Huila. Huila, in the southern part of the Colombian Central Cordillera, is the country's most famous specialty coffee region, a land of hills ringed by mountains and planted above 1,500 meters, where the country's most important rivers meet and bring abundant water and humidity. FrontStreet roasts it medium-dark to bring out dark chocolate, the sweet aroma of nuts, a moderate oiliness, and a full body, so it works equally well for pour-over, French press, moka pot, and espresso drinks such as Americanos and lattes.

For something more adventurous, try FrontStreet Coffee's Finca El Diviso Sidra, processed as an anaerobic natural. Anaerobic fermentation, sometimes called carbonic maceration, is a low-oxygen or oxygen-free fermentation usually carried out in a pressure-resistant stainless steel tank where temperature, time, pH, and other data can be controlled. The best-known styles are anaerobic natural and anaerobic washed, and this Sidra uses the anaerobic natural method, converting the coffee into richer tropical fruit aromas. Roasted medium-light, it delivers complex passion fruit, grape, apricot, and dried fruit notes in pour-over, cold brew, drip bags, and moka pot.