El Diviso is one of those names that keeps coming up, and for good reason. Nestor Lasso is a producer out of Huila, Colombia, he’s been steadily building a reputation through the work at his family farm. Quality is very much the focus here, and it shows.

He’s also got the receipts to back it up, with a technical degree in specialty coffee processing from SENA. Since 2022, coffees from El Diviso have featured in World Brewers Cup and World Barista Championship routines, which tells the tale of the levels they’re operating at.

Around 2020, Nestor and his brother Adrian took over the farm from their parents and shifted things in a slightly different direction. Less traditional, more experimentation, with a clear focus on pushing quality further. For this coffee, selective ripe cherry go through a multi-stage fermentation, alternating oxidation and anaerobic phases, controlling temperature the whole way. Finally adding leachate (coffee pulp juice) from the previous harvest and conducting leachate recirculation for 18 hours before being depulped and carefully dried. Nuts.

They’ve since joined forces with Jhoan Vergara, also from a coffee-producing family, bringing together El Diviso and Las Flores near Pitalito in Huila. It’s a simple idea, to work together to share knowledge, refine processes, and improve quality, but done properly. A few years on and they’ve also linked up with Cat and Pierre of CATA Export and leant heavily into fermentation work. Plenty of trial and error, plenty of time and cost, but with a clear goal of defining their coffees and connecting them more directly to the global market. It’s bloody paid off, these coffees are still showing up on competition stages around the world and now on Commonfolk bars.