The Farm: Finca El Diviso

Finca El Diviso sits at 1,750 metres above sea level in the mountains surrounding Pitalito, in Colombia's Huila department. The farm spans 14.5 hectares, shaded by native and fruit trees, and benefits from Huila's fertile volcanic soils and the slow, even cherry development that its temperate, high-altitude climate produces. It is not a large operation by any measure — but in the world of specialty coffee, it has become one of the most talked-about farms on the planet.

What makes El Diviso distinctive is not only its terroir but its structure. The farm is a joint venture between two families: the El Diviso plot managed by brothers Nestor and Adrian Lasso, and the neighbouring Las Flores farm run by Jhoan Vergara. All three are sons of traditional commodity coffee farmers — people who grew coffee to sell to cooperatives, with no particular focus on cup quality or variety selection. Nestor, Adrian, and Jhoan chose a different path.

The Producers: Nestor Lasso and the El Diviso Team

Nestor Lasso grew up in a small settlement called Normandía, near Pitalito in the south of Huila. Coffee was always present in his childhood, but as a commodity crop — something his parents grew and sold without the kind of attention to processing or genetics that the specialty market demands. When Nestor and his brother Adrian took over the family farm, they made a deliberate break from that tradition. Rather than continuing to sell cherries to cooperatives at commodity prices, they set out to understand what specialty coffee required and build toward it.

Nestor pursued formal training through SENA — Colombia's national vocational training service — earning a Technical Degree in Specialty Coffee Processing. His passion, as he has articulated in multiple interviews, centres on the belief that quality and innovation are the only sustainable paths forward for young Colombian coffee farmers. The family's motto captures it simply: "One of our dreams is to produce a specialty coffee that reaches the whole world. True success in specialty coffee comes from passion."

The partnership with Jhoan Vergara — who runs Las Flores, the second farm within the El Diviso project — brought complementary knowledge and doubled the genetic and processing resources available to the group. All three producers now share fermentation protocols, cupping assessments, and market connections through their collaboration with Cata Export.

"El Diviso has become not only a family farm but also a platform for experimentation — demonstrating that young farmers can build a future in coffee through innovation and collaboration." — Wide Awake Coffee

The Cata Export Partnership

The relationship between El Diviso and Cata Export — founded by Cat and Pierre, two former UK baristas turned Colombian exporters — was the inflection point that brought these coffees to European roasters and competition stages. Cat and Pierre began working with Nestor, Adrian, and Jhoan on a systematic journey of trial and error to define fermentation processes and protocols that would meet the demands of top-tier specialty buyers. The process was, by their own account, time-consuming and expensive — but the results changed the trajectory of the project entirely.

El Diviso's coffees have been used in barista competitions across Europe, winning 1st place at the Brewers Cup in Ireland and 3rd place in Austria. The 2022 World Barista Championship was won by Anthony Douglas using a Sidra from El Diviso. Jack Simpson placed 3rd at the 2023 WBC using Ombligon from the same farm. In 2024, El Diviso Ombligon featured in the winning routine at the Polish Barista Championship. Today, Cata Export and Finca El Diviso operate as a single integrated team rather than a buyer-seller relationship.

The Variety: Ombligon — Coffee's Most Mysterious Bean

Ombligon takes its name from the Spanish word ombligo — "belly button." The name refers to the variety's most distinctive physical feature: a small, navel-like protrusion at the base of the coffee cherry, visible once you know to look for it. Aside from this morphological quirk, Ombligon is also notable for its elongated bean shape, placing it visually alongside other Ethiopian-heritage varieties such as Chiroso and Gesha.

The genetic status of Ombligon remains a matter of active debate. The variety currently grows only in Huila, Colombia — primarily around Pitalito — but its origins are unclear. The most widely held theory, supported by producers and exporters at El Diviso, is that Ombligon is an Ethiopian landrace variety: seeds that arrived in Colombia decades ago through research stations or private collections and found a home in Huila's high-altitude volcanic soils. Genetic testing conducted on samples has indicated a close relationship to Ethiopian landrace populations, placing it in the same broad family as Pink Bourbon, Chiroso, Wush Wush, and Bourbon Aji — a cluster of Ethiopian-heritage varieties that have been found growing across Huila and are now considered among the region's most prized cup quality contributors.

What is not in dispute is what Ombligon produces in the cup. The variety delivers an intense, fruit-forward profile with notable berry acidity, high sweetness, and an unusual structural complexity that holds up under a wide range of processing approaches. Jack Simpson, who used El Diviso Ombligon at the 2023 WBC, described his first encounter with the variety as immediately striking: he had never tasted it before and found its flavour profile entirely unlike anything else in his sampling sessions.

El Diviso's Full Variety Portfolio

Alongside Ombligon, Finca El Diviso cultivates a remarkable range of rare and exotic varieties:

The Process: Multi-Stage Natural Fermentation

Nestor's processing approach for Ombligon is designed to amplify the variety's natural fruit intensity while building structural clarity — avoiding the murky, ferment-heavy character that poorly controlled naturals can produce. The protocol is multi-stage, with each step monitored for temperature, pH, and Brix levels.

1. Selective manual harvest at peak ripeness — cherries with 24–26 Brix are prioritised. Under-ripe and over-ripe fruit are hand-sorted and removed.
2. Cherry disinfection and floating — cherries are washed to remove surface microorganisms, then floated in cold water (10–12°C) to remove hollow beans and low-density defects.
3. 48 hours of oxidation in open plastic containers — whole cherries rest in controlled conditions, allowing initial aerobic fermentation. Leachates (fermentation juices) are collected for later use.
4. 60–80 hours of anaerobic fermentation in sealed tanks — cherries ferment without oxygen at 17–20°C. In some lots, Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast is introduced to direct flavour development toward specific aromatic compounds.
5. Leachate reintroduction — collected fermentation juices are reintroduced for a further submerged fermentation of approximately 24 hours at 17–23°C with constant recirculation, adding another layer of complexity.
6. Thermal shock — rapid temperature shift (to 65–70°C) arrests microbial activity at the desired moment, locking flavour precursors into the bean.
7. Drying on raised beds — cherries dry over 15–20 days, then pass through a mechanical drier for final moisture reduction to target levels.

Huila's Role in the Specialty Revolution

El Diviso does not exist in isolation — it is part of a broader transformation of Huila's coffee identity. The department has long been Colombia's largest coffee-producing region by volume, but over the past decade it has also become one of the most important origins for high-end specialty lots worldwide. A concentration of talented young producers, a strong network of exporters, and access to a growing pool of rare varieties — many with Ethiopian genetic roots — have made Pitalito and its surrounding municipalities the epicentre of Colombia's experimental processing movement.

The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC) and its departmental committees have invested in producer training infrastructure, while companies like Cata Export have built direct supply chains that give farms like El Diviso access to markets that commodity cooperatives cannot reach. The result is a generational shift: young producers like Nestor Lasso are earning specialty premiums that allow sustainable investment in land, equipment, and knowledge — proving that coffee farming can be a genuinely attractive livelihood for the next generation.

Brew Guide

Ombligon natural is intense and fruit-forward. It rewards methods that preserve its sweetness and berry character without over-extracting the fermentation-derived depth.