Italy’s been making some headlines in the coffee scene as of late. First, Starbucks finally opened its first Reserve Roastery in Milan and then Rubens Gardelli won the World Roasting Championships for the first time. Suddenly it seemed, that the country that most defined espresso culture many decades ago but then became a prisoner of nostalgia, was slowly but surely arriving in the 21st century of specialty coffee.

For a nation with a population of 60 million people that is so obsessed with coffee and famous for its food, Italy sports probably the tiniest number of specialty coffee roasters and cafés per capita in Europe, but those who are there are making an impact. Nero Scuro from the small town of Bassano del Grappa near Venice was founded by Paolo Tessarolo in 2013 with the mission to offer Italians a new take of coffee and foreigners a new perspective of Italian roasted coffees. Paolo wants people to know that there is more to Italian coffee than Illy, Lavazza and the like.

In fact the most popular article on this very website is the damning report I wrote some years ago about the abysmal quality of coffee in Venice. With one exception, there was simply nowhere you could get a really good, well prepared cup of coffee. Don’t even mention filter. Therefore the arrival of Nero Scuro, Gardelli and others is a welcome breath of fresh air.

Paolo sources only the finest and most exquisite single origins, often exclusive micro-lots like the Guatemala, Finca El Limonar featured in our [1/18] coffee box that took our tasting team by surprise and provided Nero Scuro with a guarranteed spot in our first coffee box of the year. The coffee is vibrant, sweet but slightly tart at the same time, offering layers of depth that you only encounter with the highest quality coffees that are consequently roasted to perfection.

Yet, while Rubens, Paolo and the team at Young Cup, another small specialty coffee roaster, are doing what they can to educate their fellow countrymen and women and foreigners alike, they are facing a somewhat of an uphill battle. Italian coffee culture is so thoroughly engrained in people’s lives that it will be tough to convince a middleaged office worked to forego his €1 espresso at Rome’s famous Termini station every morning in favour of some exotic and more pricey single origin espresso roasted by the likes of Nero Scuro. It seems, in Italy, the €1 espresso is a human right.

The task at hand might seem daunting but luckily there are influential bloggers and video makers like our dear friend Federico Pazzetta from Lucas who recently produced and released the first comprensive documentary on the current Italian coffee scene. If you haven’t watched it yet, we highly recommend taking the time to immerse yourself in it. It offers an intriguing and refreshing behind the scenes view of what Italian coffee professionals think of specialty coffee and how customers are slowly opening their minds to this completely different way to enjoy coffee.

We are proud to support Paolo and his compatriots on their mission to put Italy’s specialty coffee scene on the map and we hope that our customers will enjoy this truly outstanding coffee that we selected for our [1/18] box, along with fine single origins from Greece’s The Underdog and Norway’s Arctic Coffee Roasters.

The Guatamala, Finca El Limonar from Nero Scuro is a Coffeevine exclusive and cannot be purchased anywhere else.

For more information, please visit our coffee box page and preorder your box by 15-01 to avoid missing out.