Santander

Santander was a pioneer of Colombian coffee, and it still grows it the old way: on small farms, under shade trees. The department, in the north-east of Colombia, grows coffee in 77 of its 87 municipalities, Vanguardia reports, and since 2014 it has had its own protected name, Café de Santander. Here’s what the coffee tastes like, who grows it, and how it got there first.

The short version

• Shade-grown: nearly all of it, under walnut, guamo and cedar.
• Small farms: 95% smallholders, averaging 1.6 hectares.
• About 6% of Colombia’s crop.
• Chocolate, nuts and citrus in the cup, with a medium-high body.
• One of Colombia’s first coffee regions.

What does Santander coffee taste like?

Colombia’s coffee growers’ federation (FNC), which sets the official regional profiles, describes Santander’s coffee as having a sweet, chocolate and nutty aroma, sweet, herbal and fruity flavours, medium, citric acidity and a medium-high, creamy body. Other sources agree on the outline but add their own details:

Description	Source
Sweet, chocolate and nutty aroma; sweet, herbal, fruity flavour; medium citric acidity; medium-high, creamy body	FNC regional profile
Clean and balanced, medium-high body, medium acidity, sweet, herbal and fruity with light citrus	FNC, the Café de Santander denomination of origin
Medium citrus acidity, chocolate and nutty notes, sweet and fruity, medium-high body	Vanguardia
A clean cup, medium-high and balanced body, medium acidity, sweet, herbal and fruity flavours with subtle citrus	Diario La Economía
Chocolate and panela-like flavours, sweet, with a high body	Diario La Economía, quoting the region’s growers’ cooperative

Why is Santander coffee grown under shade?

It always has been, and the shade is part of why the coffee is protected. The FNC explains that Santander’s technified shade-grown system keeps temperatures even, so the cherries ripen more slowly and build up more sugars, and the harvest comes in a concentrated burst, which makes it easier to pick the fruit evenly ripe. Vanguardia says the coffee grows under walnut, guamo and cedar trees that protect it from the sun. Diario La Economía quotes two figures, 96% and 98% of the crop under shade, and says the trees bring birds, parrots and other wildlife, which the growers’ cooperative argues makes Santander’s coffee more sustainable. One speaker added that shade lets farmers leave cherries to ripen longer and try special fermentations. That’s a contrast with much of Colombia, which from the 1960s moved to Caturra, grown more intensively and with far less shade, as a Quindío grower told Crónica del Quindío (see Quindío).

Who grows coffee in Santander?

Smallholders. Vanguardia’s figures:

• 95% of growers have small plots, with an average of 1.6 hectares of coffee each.
• Only 430 growers have more than 10 hectares.
• 54,320 hectares of coffee were planted in 2024, sixth among Colombia’s departments, according to the FNC’s coffee information system (SICA), reported by Agronegocios.
• 21,937 hectares of that are high-quality coffees, grown by more than 8,000 farmers.
• The department’s share of Colombia’s coffee rose from 6.17% in 2023 to 6.23%.
• The big harvest from September 2024 to early 2025 brought about COP 1.3 trillion into the regional economy.

Coffee is still spreading: at the end of 2024, Vanguardia reports, the municipalities of Palmar, Carcasí and Macaravita began growing it. El Socorro has the most coffee, more than 4,400 hectares; Capitanejo, in the Chicamocha canyon, only 13. The Departmental Committee of Coffee Growers dates from 10 December 1928, Diario La Economía says.

How did coffee come to Santander?

Early, and through the church, by most accounts:

When	What happened	Source
1787	The archbishop-viceroy Caballero y Góngora reports coffee near Girón, in Santander	Wikipedia
Undated	Francisco Romero, a priest, is said to have set parishioners the penance of planting coffee	Wikipedia; Vanguardia
19th century	Large coffee estates in Santander and Norte de Santander; from 1875, small growers multiply	Wikipedia
Early 1900s	After the Thousand Days War, Santander’s big estates fall into crisis, and coffee’s centre moves west	Wikipedia
2014	Café de Santander is protected as a denomination of origin (SIC Resolution 50042, 25 August)	FNC

Wikipedia places Romero’s parish in Salazar de las Palmas, today in Norte de Santander, and its coffee axis article says Colombia’s first commercial coffee came from there. Vanguardia tells the story as Santander’s own, adding that Romero taught people to plant coffee in their patios. Treat the details as tradition.

Santander and other Colombian origins

• Coffee in Colombia: the whole country, its harvests and its figures.
• Quindío: the coffee axis, and its UNESCO landscape.
• Colombian tinto: how Colombians brew it at home.