El Diviso

Country: Colombia
Area: Pitalito, Huila Department
Processing: Anaerobic Thermo-Shock Natural
Varietal: Ombiglon
Altitude: 1850 MASL

black forest cake
tropical fruit
raspberry cordial

Nestor (and his brother Adrian) have been written about a lot in the last few years – as their coffees keep appearing in the top places for Barista and Brewers Cup competitions. Our good friend Harry Ko (of The Flour) won the Australian Brewers Cup with some Sidra from these guys in ’22, and we’ve tried to drink this coffee anywhere we could since! Nestor and Adrian took over their family farm, and with the help of Jhoan Vergara have put in some protocols and processes to release incredibly well processed coffees, as well as guide other producers working with Cata Export. Cata Export are a recently started export crew based in Colombia, and have helped the team at El Diviso and others get exceptional coffees overseas.

Like the Pink ‘Bourbon’, Ombiglon is a new varietal found (or selected) in Huila, Colombia; and genetically, both of these trace back to Ethiopian landrace (despite Pink Bourbon sounding like part of the Bourbon family). Ombiglon means belly button in Spanish, and the name comes from the little dimple at the base of this cultivar’s cherry.

As you can imagine, processing a novel cultivar is only half of the battle to place in competitions, so the processing here really elevates the fantastic character from the seeds.

1. Coffee cherry is picked at peak ripeness, measured with a brix refractometer (21-24 degrees)
2. The cherry is stacked uncovered, allowing the cherry juice (must, or mosto) to collect, at this stage the must is recirculated and monitored to maintain sugar content (19 degrees brix) and pH level (>5)
3. The coffee is washed and floaters/broken fruit removed
4. After washing, the cherry is shocked in 50 C water, this helps to cultivate fermentation and loosen the cherry, then the cherry are moved to plastic containers where anaeobic fermentation is helped on with the addition of brewers yeast in 32 C water
5. This cherry and yeast mixture is left for 38 hours before the cherry is removed and mechanically dried to reach a water content of 18%, this takes approximately 12 hours, this is done to prevent mould formation and remove the risk of other bacteria starting to colonise
6. After drying to 18%, the cherry is bagged again, and left to stabilise in a dark room for 2 days
7. Finally, after the multi-step, multi-day set of processes, the coffee cherry is dried over 15 days on raised beds, until reaching 11-115% moisture content

Compared to traditional washed and natural processes, all of the interventions in the steps above are to select for yeast cultivation, reduce risk of mould and unclean flavours, while ensuring that peak complexity and density of seeds are maintained.

In the cup, there’s an overwhelming set of sensations, on the nose, there are layers of raw cacao, tropical fruit and hints of bright gooseberry/passionfruit. In the cup, the profile is always changing from boozy rich chocolate cake textured to almost mascerated berry with a long floral finish, and sparkling acidity as the cup cools. We only offer this coffee as a filter roast.