TANAT – Nestor Lasso [Estate #1] 200g | Colombia

Nestor Lasso has become one of TANAT's most reliable names out of Colombia, and it's not hard to see why. He's part of a third generation of coffee growers at El Diviso, in Pitalito, Huila — a farm he runs alongside his brother Adrián — but there's nothing traditional about his approach. Lasso has built an international reputation on treating fermentation as a variable to be engineered with precision, not a step to be left to chance, and this lot shows that discipline from the very first stage.

Before the cherries ever reach a dryer, they go through an unusually deliberate sequence. They're first sorted in water to remove anything underripe or damaged, then hand-inspected and disinfected. From there, they sit through a 24-hour oxidation phase before depulping — a step that starts shaping the cup's structure before fermentation has even begun. What follows is a controlled 72-hour anaerobic fermentation, sealed away from oxygen specifically to draw out aromatic complexity that a standard washed process wouldn't reach. Only after all of that does the coffee get washed and laid out in the sun to dry, a process that takes around ten days to bring the beans down to a stable moisture point.

The variety here is a blend of Castillo and Caturra, grown above 1,750 metres — solid, dependable genetics rather than anything exotic, which suits a lot built around processing rather than varietal rarity. In the cup, that shows up as warmth rather than sharpness: hazelnut and dried apricot up front, with a peach note that carries through into the finish. It's roasted with espresso specifically in mind, medium in profile, built to hold its shape through milk without losing the fruit character underneath.

If you're curious what Lasso's fermentation work is capable of but want somewhere approachable to start, this is it — less extreme than some of his more experimental lots, but still carrying real complexity for an everyday espresso.

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