Canary Islands, Finca Sanssouci Tenerife Coffee

Based on the island of Tenerife, the Finca Sanssouci farm was founded in 2002 and is owned and managed by husband and wife Alexandra and Peter – the former a retired professor of botany (plant physiology and ecology) from the University of Munich, who’s able to utilise his theoretical knowledge with practical agriculture to produce coffees of outstanding quality. Because of the lack of pests on the island, this coffee is naturally organic – the management of the plants is restricted to irrigation, organic fertilisation, and pruning.

Coffee first came to the Canary Islands in the late 18th century, when the first coffee trees were planted in the ‘La Orotava Acclimatization Garden’ in Tenerife, founded by royal decree in 1788. The garden was built by King Carlos III of Spain to take advantage of the Canary Islands’ warm climate to grow exotic plants and seeds from America and Asia.

Today, coffee is still produced in extremely small amounts on the islands of Tenerife, La Palma, El Hierro, and Gran Canaria by family run estates. Very little coffee leaves the islands, with most of it consumed by the producing families or sold to local roasters and coffee shops.