Climate change helps Spanish coffee lovers grow their own beans
Juan Giraldez and Eva Prat, quixotic coffee lovers who over 26 years have turned themselves into agrarians, have produced the world’s first coffee plantation in a continental climate.
“It is a great achievement,” Giraldez, 49, said. At 43.5° latitude, his plantation lies well north of the subtropical zones where coffee was thought viable. “This is a revolution in the world of coffee. The adaptation of plants to a continental climate is a unique milestone.”
The endeavour flows from a broader climatological upheaval: Europe, historically confined to consuming it, may find itself cultivating one of the world’s most beloved commodities. Climate change, Giraldez says, is shifting the “coffee belt” to the north, tightening the latitudinal band in which coffee can thrive and bringing new opportunities to temperate regions.
“We have proved the impossible. Europe can grow delicious coffee,” he said. The world’s biggest consumers may become its producers.
To date, Giraldez and Prat’s plantation is a budding concern. Their farm, Castellvilar, lies in Sant Vicenç de Torello, north of Barcelona, where winter temperatures can sink to minus 3C and summer highs soar to 42C. Yet, in a valley shaded by oak trees, coffee plants are not only surviving but producing fruit. This year, nearly four years after planting, their 5,000 young arabica trees yielded about 1.5kg of beans.
Some of Castellvilar’s harvest
CIELITO MERCADO VIVAS FOR THE TIMES
The harvest is small but symbolic. In 2024, the couple gathered only 150 grams. Now, with output increasing tenfold, they plan a limited coffee release this year, once new trees mature. The estate could eventually host 30,000 trees, enough to produce 28,000kg a year. At present it could potentially already generate 7,000kg a year.
“Each year we will have more, and in a couple of years it will be commercially viable,” he said.
• Is coffee good for you? How it works and when to drink it
The ambition is not industrial but artisanal. The couple grow two coveted arabica varieties, Geisha, considered among the world’s finest, and Castillo superior, selected after years of research. The beans develop slowly in Osona’s sharp contrasts of heat and frost, conditions that Giraldez believes intensify flavour. “Our only chance is quality, not quantity,” he said. “We want to prove a coffee grown here can be as exceptional as the best in the world.”
Tasting the first cups last year, the pair wept. “It was floral, soft, fruity, with notes of chocolate and touches of our oak trees, our land, the humidity and vegetation,” Giraldez said. Next year, specialists will be invited to sample the beans.
The project has taken eight years, two of study and six of cultivation, and €700,000 in investment — all without public subsidies. The germination itself was a feat: in tropical regions, seeds sprout in three months; at Castellvilar it took up to a year. Only the hardiest seedlings survived, creating what Giraldez calls a “forced evolution” of plants adapted to continental extremes.
They work with the devotion of guardians. “We have two children, and we look after the coffee as well as them,” Giraldez said. In winter, he and Prat, 45, patrol the rows at night, ready to wrap plants against frost or to fire up heaters. “The plants are like children, you cannot leave them alone.”
Prat and Giraldez patrol their crops diligently
CIELITO MERCADO VIVAS FOR THE TIMES
Some of the plants are now in flower, a sight that impassions Giraldez, who says it encapsulates all their effort, love and hope for coffee. “After hard work we have proved the impossible,” he said.
Brazil, Ethiopia and Vietnam, all big exporting nations, are already struggling with extreme heat, erratic rains, pests and droughts. Some are shifting plantations upslope; others are experimenting with hardier species.
The broader industry is under strain. In Brazil, roasters including 3 Coracoes and Melitta put up prices after the weather hit harvests and tariffs pushed arabica prices up more than 20 per cent, on top of a 70 per cent rise last year. With raw beans making up 40 per cent of wholesale costs, consumers worldwide are feeling the squeeze. Against this backdrop, even tiny European harvests are drawing attention.
• What exactly is a flat white? 30 coffee questions answered
Researchers in Malaga are experimenting with coffee on the subtropical coast,and growers in Sicily and the Canary Islands have begun small harvests. Yet Castellvilar, deep in continental Catalonia, is the boldest outlier.
The farm is also an ecosystem. Blueberries and the endangered Catalan white goat graze between the rows, helping with forest management. Prat sees the project as a way of life rather than just a crop. “We live with the coffee plants,” she said. “They depend on us, and we depend on them. It is not just farming, it is hope.”
Hope, too, that Europe may one day add its own beans to the global table. For now, the precious kilo and a half of this year’s harvest is proof of possibility. “People say we are mad,” Giraldez said. “But we say, why not? Sometimes the edge is where the most beautiful things happen.”