The Reviving Origins Nespresso Pod With The Strongest Brew

Nespresso devotees tend to have favorites pods, ordering them over and over again. But there's a special pleasure in venturing outside comfort zones, especially when the only risk is a cup of coffee from a single little pod. That's how Nespresso gets java lovers hooked on intriguing, complex coffee journeys, offering limited edition Nespresso pods or region-specific beans strongly tied to origin or agricultural anomalies. In the Reviving Origins series, things are even more intricately designated, focusing specifically on protecting endangered or rare coffees and associated coffee communities. 

After a trip to Puerto Rico earlier this year, which included an afternoon of coffee roasting and tasting with local coffee farmers, I was thrilled to discover that Nespresso's Cafecito de Puerto Rico was part of the Reviving Origins series, which currently offers only two coffee blends. Its inclusion highlights the island's deep coffee culture while noting the devastation of Hurricane Fiona in 2022 and committing to helping coffee farmers restore their farms and build better protection from natural disasters. The pods themselves also happen to make the strongest brew of the collection, rating 10 on the Nespresso intensity scale. 

The Reviving Origins Cafecito de Puerto Rico blend is classified by Nespresso as a double espresso drink. Accordingly, the pod holds 2.7 fluid ounces of espresso-ground beans and is available only in Vertuo pods for the company's Vertuo machines. It carries flavor notes of chocolatey dark cocoa as well as brown spice and pepper, with a highly roasted persona.

The level-10 intensity of Reviving Origin Puerto Rico pods easily surpasses the level-6 rating of its cohort in the collection, the Reviving Origins Kahawa Ya Congo VL. The Congo coffee, born of volcanic soils on the shores of Lake Kivu, is instead described as mild, fruity, and nutty with notes of sweet cereal. 

As a double espresso pod, the Cafecito de Puerto Rico in the Reviving Origins series is more aligned with the three other standard double espresso pods in Nespresso's Vertuo line. In that context, it's not quite the overall double espresso pod with the boldest flavor, but it's close. The Scuro double espresso tops it by one point, landing at 11 on the intensity scale. It's important to note that intensity in the world of Nespresso doesn't measure the amount of caffeine in a pod, but rather the roasting level, the depth of body, and the bitterness.

The Puerto Rican pods, while being delectably rich and intense, also carry a higher price point, at $20 for a sleeve of 10 pods, equating to $2 per cup of double espresso — that's compared to $1.50 per pod for the Congo pods. From a personal perspective, being an advocate for deep, rich coffee flavor with unlimited intensity, the Reviving Origin Puerto Rico pods are well worth the extra coin — evidenced by the dozens of Puerto Rican pods populating my mailbox every month.