Europe is too cold. The coffee plant needs year-round temperatures of 18–25 °C, sufficient rainfall, and no frost. Small-scale growing experiments exist in the Canary Islands and southern Italy.

Why Doesn’t Coffee Grow in Europe?

Europe is too cold. The coffee plant needs year-round temperatures of 18–25 °C, sufficient rainfall, and no frost. Small-scale growing experiments exist in the Canary Islands and southern Italy.

Why that matters

Coffea arabica originates from the tropical highlands of Ethiopia and has adapted over millennia to a climate that Europe cannot provide: consistently warm temperatures without frost, 1,500–2,000 mm of rainfall per year, and no extreme fluctuations between summer and winter.

A single frosty night can severely damage or kill a coffee plant. Even Europe’s mild Mediterranean climate falls short of the requirements — winters are too cold, nights too long, rainfall too irregular. The only European territories with an approximately suitable climate are the Canary Islands (Spanish territory but geographically off the coast of Africa) and parts of Sicily and Calabria in southern Italy.

Coffee is indeed grown on the Canary Islands — in small quantities, primarily on Gran Canaria and Lanzarote. Production is tiny (under 10 tonnes per year) and doesn’t even cover local demand. In Sicily, experimental outdoor plantings have emerged in recent years, aided by milder winters. Whether this increases due to climate change remains to be seen.

Climate change is redrawing the map of coffee cultivation. While Arabica suffers in traditional growing countries under rising temperatures, fringe areas like southern Europe could theoretically benefit. In practice, though, that’s still a long way off: the soils don’t fit, the infrastructure is lacking, and the volumes would be commercially irrelevant.

At Green Wall Coffee

In Berlin-Lichtenberg, where our café stands on Sophienstraße 27, no coffee grows — the winters see to that. But the awareness of how far the journey is from tropical shrub to Berlin cup is part of understanding specialty coffee. When guests ask why our coffee costs more than supermarket coffee, I often start with that journey: 8,000 kilometres, at least six processing steps, three to four years of growth.

Related Questions

• Where is coffee grown worldwide?
• Can you grow coffee at home as a houseplant?
• How does climate change affect coffee growing?

More depth on this topic in the article How to Make Perfect Espresso. Or stop by at Sophienstraße 27 — Mon–Fri 8am–5pm, Sat 10am–5pm.