As Green Coffee Quality and Development Manager Rodriguez leads the efforts to continually innovate and create new and inspiring coffee experiences for Nespresso to surprise coffee connoisseurs around the world. He draws inspiration for Nespresso Grand Crus from many and varied sources. He travels incessantly in the coffee growing areas of the world in the search for new terroirs, in the search for the conditions which are capable of producing the highest quality coffees, seeking out the green coffee varieties which will create extraordinary coffee experiences.
Inspiration comes not only from the coffee cherry. Rodriguez has also made a success of collaboration. He brings in other experts of aroma and flavour, namely some of the world’s greatest chefs and sommeliers. It was Rodriguez who initiated the collaboration with leading Argentinian chef Mauro Colagreco which led to the creation of the Limited Edition Crealto Grand Cru which was available for a limited period in 2013 to Professional customers. Colagreco, whose two-starred Michelin restaurant on the Mediterranean coastline of France is renowned for its adherence to slow food and an almost religious devotion to the freshest of produce, much of it grown in Colagreco’s own kitchen garden. Crealto became a symbol of that philosophy, a Grand Cru which was blended to perfection and then subjected to exceptionally long roasting times for an extraordinarily satisfying taste result.
From the selection of the green coffee beans, through a stringent quality testing process which sees the coffee tested no less than 40 times, the Nespresso Grand Crus are masterfully created. Expert blenders and roasters work to create the most consistently exceptional coffee experiences.
Then there are those artists of the kitchen who find the Nespresso Grand Cru aroma and flavour provides an inspirational or unusual element to their work. Yannick Alléno, the Parisian chef whose 40th year was crowned by receiving his third Michelin star launching him into the superstar league of world-renowned chefs. Also a Nespresso Culinary Ambassador, he shares the same need for discovery as Alexis Rodriguez. In his words, “I seek out what I don’t know”. Alléno has found inspiration in the exceptional aroma profile of the single origin Grand Cru from India has as part of his menu creation.
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