Mexico Officially Grants Denomination of Origin Status to Café Nayarit

The Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) published the Declaration of Protection that establishes “Café Nayarit” as a Denomination of Origin, a legal shield for coffee produced in the municipalities of Compostela, Ruiz, San Blas and Xalisco. The declaration, published March 3, 2026, applies primarily to Coffea arabica and marks a formal step to control name use and product identity. “The ‘Café Nayarit’ Designation of Origin is now a reality in Mexico.”

Under the declaration, “Café Nayarit” is designated a national asset and may be used only with authorization from IMPI; labels must include the phrase “Protected Designation of Origin” (PDO). The declaration ties the name to place and practice: “It is not an award or a competition. It is an official recognition that this type of coffee is only found in a specific region.” Its validity will remain “as long as the conditions that gave rise to it exist,” and the state intends to pursue international recognition through trade agreements.

The published text links the coffee’s profile to local conditions, noting that “factors such as climate, soil, altitude, and coffee-growing tradition all play a role here. This combination of natural and human factors shapes the coffee’s profile.” The declaration reportedly describes technical characteristics that distinguish Nayarit coffee, though the full technical specifications in the declaration were not reproduced in the notice summarizing the publication.

State authorities have been pushing for the designation as part of a broader promotion effort. “The Government of the State of Nayarit indicated last year that it was seeking the designation of origin for the product to consolidate its national and international ‘quality, identity, and prestige,’ as it has even been recently promoted in Dubai.” MexicoDailyPost noted Nayarit coffee’s presence at World of Coffee Dubai and cited exports to the United States, France and Spain as existing market ties the designation aims to protect.

The move follows precedent in Mexican coffee protection: Pluma coffee received a Declaration of Protection approved February 4, 2020, covering 30 municipalities in Oaxaca, and tequila was Mexico’s first Denomination of Origin in 1974. National production context underscores the policy stakes: “Coffee production is an economically important crop in 13 of Mexico’s 31 states,” and “the states of Chiapas, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Puebla, and Nayarit account for 90% of all production,” while “twenty-five percent of the coffee crop production takes place in rural areas identified as socially and economically marginalized and food insecure.”

International enforcement and registration remain on the agenda: WIPO language cited in the background material stresses that internationally registered appellations carry broad protections under Article 3 and that IMPI must process international registration via the Foreign Affairs Secretariat under the Lisbon Agreement. “The content of the protection granted to an internationally registered appellation of origin is very broad,” and administrative declarations of nullity and cancellation “are made in writing by the Institute, ex officio or at the request of a party or the Federal Public Prosecutors Office.”

With IMPI’s publication on March 3, 2026, producers in Compostela, Ruiz, San Blas and Xalisco now have a legally protected name to leverage for domestic and international markets, even as the region and federal agencies move to define technical rules, label authorization and the pathway to international registration.