Where to Find Good Coffee in South America: How Colombian Coffee Bean Altitude Secures Its World's Second Position

FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to Colombian Coffee

Colombia is the world's third-largest coffee producer and exporter, located in the northwestern part of South America. It borders the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuela to the east, Brazil to the southeast, Ecuador to the south and Panama to the northwest - all of them coffee-producing countries.

Colombia is rich in natural resources, with coffee, flowers, gold and emeralds known as the country's "four treasures." It is the second-largest Arabica producer after Brazil, the world's largest exporter of Arabica beans and the world's largest exporter of washed coffee. Colombian coffee is often described as having a silky, smooth texture. Among all coffees it has the best balance, a soft, smooth cup that can be enjoyed at any time, earning praise unmatched by other coffees and the nickname "green gold."

The earliest record of coffee cultivation in Colombia appears in a book titled The Illustrated Orinoca by the Spanish missionary Jose Gumilla. He described his experiences while doing missionary work along the Meta River in 1730 and mentioned local coffee plantations. By 1787 other missionaries had spread coffee to other parts of Colombia.

Growers plant tall trees or banana trees around the coffee. During the seedling stage, shade structures are built to keep the cool, humid conditions coffee needs. Because humidity is high and the temperature range inside the coffee forest is small, the beans mature slowly.

Colombian growers have no heavy machinery for harvesting and irrigation, nor spare money to hire workers. All the cherries are hand-picked and selected by the growers themselves, which favours the accumulation of caffeine and aromatic compounds and results in the best coffee quality.

Unique Coffee Varieties

Pink Bourbon, as the name suggests, produces romantic pink coffee cherries when ripe. It is a very rare new variety, developed by crossing Red Bourbon and Yellow Bourbon. It is considered rare mainly because holding that beautiful pink colour is extremely difficult. Sometimes orange Bourbon cherries are harvested instead, because cherry colour is ultimately determined by recessive genes in the pollen. Among the pollen grains selected for hybridisation there are both yellow genes leaning toward Yellow Bourbon and red genes leaning toward Red Bourbon, all recessive and prone to interfering with one another.

Pink Bourbon is currently found in Colombia and Guatemala. Take this batch of Pink Bourbon: there are approximately 1,800 coffee trees, and each tree produces about 1.8kg of fresh cherries per harvest. After removing the pulp and skin, roughly 0.36kg of coffee beans remain. In a normal harvest season, the total production of this coffee is less than 650kg.

Knowledge Point

Colombian coffee is world-renowned for its specialty quality, smooth taste and high grade.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If Colombian coffee is your entry point to South America, the neighbouring Brazilian origin is a natural next stop, and it plays much the same role in a daily lineup. FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon is a classic single-origin Brazilian lot from a district known for high-quality beans. Roasted medium, it shows cream, peanut, toast, caramel and hazelnut aromas with a round body, no real acidity and a light bitter edge, and it works as pour-over, moka pot, espresso SOE, siphon or French press.

FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Queen Farm comes from Mogiana near Sul de Minas, where fertile red volcanic soil lets the cherries take up abundant nutrients and develop a fuller aroma. The variety is the rare Yellow Bourbon, a natural mutation of Red Bourbon with a cleaner fruit character; brewed by pour-over, moka pot or home espresso machine it delivers a sugarcane sweetness no other origin quite matches, alongside fruit and chocolate notes.

Brazilian coffee's low acidity, balanced body and modest price also make it the backbone of espresso blends. FrontStreet Coffee's espresso range - the rich-crema Classic Blend, the nut-forward Signature Blend, the balanced Black Cocoa Blend recommended by many baristas and FrontStreet Coffee's Commercial Blend built for cafes - all rely on Brazilian beans for chocolate and cream aromas plus a soft sweet-bitter balance that keeps extraction stable.