Caldas

Caldas is one of the three departments of Colombia’s coffee axis, with Quindío and Risaralda, and part of UNESCO’s Coffee Cultural Landscape. It’s also where Colombian coffee science happens: Cenicafé, the national coffee research centre, has been based at Chinchiná since 1938. Caldas grows less coffee than it used to, but what it grows, it grows very efficiently. Here’s what to know.

The short version

• Coffee axis and UNESCO landscape, with Quindío and Risaralda.
• About 1,200–1,800 m, at 18–21°C on average.
• Sweet, fruity and caramel, with medium tartaric acidity and a silky body.
• Highly productive, but losing coffee land to avocados.
• Home of Cenicafé, Colombia’s coffee research centre.

What does Caldas coffee taste like?

The FNC’s official regional profile describes a sweet caramel aroma, sweet, fruity flavours, medium, tartaric acidity and a medium, silky body. Caldas doesn’t have its own denomination of origin; Spanish Wikipedia lists one for the coffee landscape of Caldas, Quindío, Risaralda and northern Tolima and Valle as still to be granted.

Where and when is Caldas coffee grown?

Finagro, Colombia’s agricultural finance agency, describes the coffee zone around Villamaría, Riosucio, Belén de Umbría, Aguadas, Salamina and Filadelfia in its 2019 reference sheet: an altitude of 1,200 to 1,800 metres, a mean annual temperature of 18 to 21°C, and 1,000 to 2,500 mm of rain a year. Like the rest of the central coffee region, Caldas picks twice: USDA says the main harvest runs from October to December and that the second crop, the mitaca from April to June, is concentrated in the central coffee region. The FNC’s coffee atlas, written with Cenicafé from 2017 figures, gives a slightly wider coffee zone, 1,100 to 1,900 metres at an average 20 °C, and a main harvest from September to December (70% of the crop) with a mitaca from March to May (30%).

Why is Caldas losing coffee land?

Because other crops pay. La Patria reported in May 2025, from the FNC’s coffee information system (SICA), that Caldas had 57,638 hectares of coffee in 25 municipalities, against 72,370 in 2015: a fall of 20.35% in ten years, and 35.6% over twenty. Over the same years its avocado area grew to 21,267 hectares by 2023, up 67% in four years. Palestina, Manizales and Chinchiná lost the most coffee.

Yet Caldas remains the most technified and productive coffee department in the country, the paper said: ten of its municipalities are among Colombia’s 30 most productive, and Palestina averages up to 29 bags a hectare, against 21 nationally. Caldas also keeps its trees young: it renewed 7,329 hectares in 2024, 101.8% of its target, one of only a few departments to beat it.

Area of coffee in Caldas	Source
72,370 ha (2015)	FNC coffee information system, via La Patria
59,052 ha (2024)	FNC coffee information system, via Agronegocios
57,638 ha (2025)	FNC coffee information system, via La Patria

What is Cenicafé?

Colombia’s National Coffee Research Centre, run by the FNC. Spanish Wikipedia says its roots go back to the FNC’s founding in 1927; it began with a school farm, La Esperanza, in Cundinamarca in 1929, and was formally created on 9 November 1938, with its headquarters at the experimental farm in Chinchiná, Caldas. Its main station, Naranjal, is on the road between Chinchiná and Manizales, and it has eight more experimental stations across Colombia’s three mountain ranges. USDA credits Cenicafé with newer varieties such as Castalia, Celestra and Cocoon, bred for cup quality and disease resistance, and reports that 87% of Colombia’s coffee area is planted with rust-resistant varieties.

How did the 2026 earthquake affect Caldas?

The magnitude 7.4 earthquake of 10 August 2026 hit Manizales and Pereira hard, Agrolatam reported. More than 2,500 coffee growers in Caldas suffered damage to their homes and to their wet mills and dryers, the director of Caldas’s coffee committee, Natalia Yepes Jaramillo, told El Tiempo, and El Niño’s heat and drought then raised coffee berry borer damage across the coffee axis.

Caldas and other Colombian origins

• Coffee in Colombia: the whole country, its harvests and its figures.
• Quindío: the heart of the coffee axis.
• Antioquia: Colombia’s second-biggest producer, to the north.
• Tolima: two harvests a year.