TANAT – Finca La Riviera [Anaerobic] 200g | Colombia

Anaerobic processing has become one of the more talked-about techniques in specialty coffee over the last several years, but the version used on this lot from Finca La Riviera goes a step further than simply sealing cherries away from oxygen. Rather than leaving fermentation to whatever wild microbes happen to be present, the farm cultivates its own selected culture of yeasts and bacteria from its cherries and deliberately introduces it into the sealed fermentation tank — a technique known as anaerobic culturing. Giving the fermentation a defined starter culture, rather than an unpredictable wild one, lets producers steer which microbial activity dominates, generally pushing towards more pronounced fruit character and a rounder, softer acidity than fermentation left to chance.

The farm itself sits in Risaralda, Colombia, at 1,400 metres, where producer Julio Madrid grows a mix of Caturra and Castillo. Castillo in particular was bred by Cenicafé, Colombia's national coffee research centre, specifically to resist coffee leaf rust while preserving cup quality — one of the reasons it's now planted so widely across the country, freeing producers to focus energy on processing innovation like this rather than fighting disease pressure. TANAT has worked with Finca La Riviera for several years now, and describes it as one of the names they return to as a benchmark within Colombian specialty coffee.

In the cup, the effect of that controlled fermentation is immediate: lychee opens things up with an exotic sweetness, mango follows through with a juicy, rounder texture, and red fruit carries the cup through into a bright, persistent finish. For all that fruit intensity, it doesn't tip into overt sweetness — the acidity stays controlled throughout, which is exactly the balance a carefully managed fermentation like this is meant to produce.

Freshly roasted by TANAT in Paris and imported to the UK by ROAST EDIT Co.