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The history of coffee in Venezuela
Coffee reached the Orinoco in the 1730s, became an export crop in the nineteenth century and saw its production collapse in the twenty-first. Buying Venezuelan coffee today means buying out of an interrupted tradition.
The beginning: a mission planting
In “El Orinoco ilustrado” (Madrid, 1741) the Jesuit José Gumilla writes that he sowed coffee at the Orinoco missions himself and raised it. That is the earliest surviving record of coffee on Venezuelan soil, and a first-hand one.
From garden to hacienda
The first organised plantation was laid out in 1783 in the gardens of Chacao, on the La Floresta and Blandín estates. Out of those beginnings grew a nineteenth-century export economy that shaped the country.
The break
The USDA recorded 1.25 million bags of production for 1998/99. For 2014/15 the same service reported the sharpest fall in at least fifteen years, caused mainly by a coffee rust outbreak.
What follows from that today
On the European market Venezuelan coffee is not a fixture but a gap, which is exactly what makes it a point of difference on a list. Anyone carrying it should know that volumes and harvests are less predictable here than at established origins.
In short
- Earliest record: 1730s, the Orinoco missions (Gumilla, 1741).
- First organised plantation: 1783, at Chacao.
- Sharpest production fall in at least 15 years for 2014/15 (USDA, GAIN VE1508).
Sources
Everything this article states rests on the sources below. Where our own catalogue is the source, it says so, and those figures can be counted on the product pages.
- José Gumilla: El Orinoco ilustrado, y defendido, historia natural, civil y geographica de este gran río, Madrid (1741)
- Fundación Empresas Polar: Diccionario de Historia de Venezuela: entry “Café”, BiblioFEP (2024) bibliofep.fundacionempresaspolar.org
- USDA Foreign Agricultural Service: Coffee Annual: Venezuela, GAIN report, Caracas (2000) apps.fas.usda.gov
- USDA Foreign Agricultural Service: Coffee Annual: Venezuela, GAIN report, Caracas (2015) fas.usda.gov
- International Coffee Organization: World Coffee Statistics Database (2026) ico.org