For the third course in our series of Buyer’s Guides, we turn our attention to Colombia. Colombia is the world’s biggest producer of washed arabica coffee and therefore one of the most important producing countries to the specialty coffee industry.
Colombia was also perhaps the first country in the world to establish a reputation as a single-origin coffee producer, in part because of its dedication to producing only fully washed arabica — but also thanks to some canny marketing from the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia (FNC) dating back to the late 1950s. The FNC registered trademarks for ‘100% Colombian coffee’ and promoted them with a highly influential advertising campaign, pivoting around the fictional character of Juan Valdez.