Nariño

Nariño is Colombia’s southernmost coffee department, on the Ecuadorian border, and its coffee does not taste like the Colombian stereotype.

Extreme altitude

Farms here reach 2,300 metres — extraordinarily high for coffee, and normally impossible at this latitude because night temperatures would be too low for the cherry to ripen.

Nariño gets away with it because warm air rising from the Patía valley moderates night-time temperatures on the slopes above. It is a genuinely unusual local effect, and it is why the region exists as a coffee origin at all.

What that does

Slow ripening at altitude concentrates sugars and acids and produces very dense beans. The result is bright, structured and acidic in a way that surprises people expecting Colombian caramel: tropical fruit, citrus, sometimes a lime-like character, with a crisp finish.

The farms

Very small, often under a hectare, on extremely steep ground. Much of the region’s coffee is picked and processed by hand at the household level, then aggregated through co-operatives.

The harvest

Nariño’s main harvest runs from April to July — later than most of Colombia — so its coffees arrive when other Colombian lots are ageing.

Brewing it

Filter, light roast, clean brewer. Its acidity is the point and immersion methods mute it. A V60 or a Kalita shows what it is doing.

Because the beans are dense, grind finer and brew hot. Under-extracted Nariño reads as sour rather than bright, and the two are easy to confuse.