Named the world's best restaurant five times, in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2021, holder of three Michelin stars and an influence on a whole generation of cooks: noma, the restaurant opened in Copenhagen in 2003 by René Redzepi and Claus Meyer, reshaped Nordic cuisine around foraging and fermentation. Noma Kaffe is its coffee. Launched in 2025 under the Noma Projects umbrella, the arm that has been selling the fermentation lab's garums and condiments since 2022, the brand takes the beans served at the table out of the restaurant, roasted in Copenhagen by Carolyne Lane's team.
Ask Carolyne why noma took up coffee and she will tell you the restaurant applies to the bean what it has done for twenty years with the people who grow its other ingredients: long relationships, minimal processing, respect for terroir and variety. A Brit trained on the German coffee scene, she runs noma's coffee and tea programme. René Redzepi calls himself obsessed with the subject, and the restaurant has worked for years with Tim Wendelboe, the Oslo roaster. Carolyne turned that obsession into a complete supply chain, from choosing the farms to the roast profile, along with a way of serving coffee that has been talked about far beyond Denmark.
An Ikawa Paid Back from Her Salary
Roasting began in 2019 with an unusual arrangement: Carolyne convinced noma to buy an Ikawa sample roaster, which she paid back through deductions from her own salary. At the same time, she rethought the service with Tim Wendelboe. The tableside pour-overs, spectacular but impossible for a whole brigade to reproduce identically, were dropped. In their place came the "Nomacano": 23 grams of coffee pulled on the espresso machine for around 180 grams of drink, paper-filtered, diluted to suit the coffee, a single extraction for three or four guests. Her motto sums up the method: real skill lies in knowing how to break the rules intelligently.
By 2024, the little machine was no longer enough. Carolyne hired Alastair Hesp, former head roaster at Bonanza in Berlin, one of the houses that defined the light style of European roasting, and noma set up small-batch production a few minutes by bike from the restaurant. On 6 March 2025, the Noma Kaffe subscription opened to the public: two 250g bags a month, coffees that vary from one subscriber to the next depending on the micro-lots available, and a journal about the trips to origin. In October 2025, the greenhouse in noma's garden on Refshalevej became a shop where you can taste the coffees next to the Noma Projects pantry.
Washed Coffees, Micro-Lots and Names
Carolyne's taste runs to washed coffees, because they show the variety and the place rather than the fermentation work. Lots are kept separate in small quantities, between 50 and 200 kilos, to preserve the identity of a plot or a producer instead of blending it into a cooperative lot. Sourcing follows relationships the restaurant has sometimes nurtured for a long time. In Mexico, the link goes back to the Tulum pop-up in 2017: with Jesús Salazar of Cafeólogo, the team works with Tseltal producers in Tenejapa, Chiapas, whose washed Garnica from Severiano Intzín opened the first shipment. Ethiopia was the first trip to origin, in 2018, alongside Tim Wendelboe. In Colombia, the exporter Azahar took them to Luis Alberto Jojoa in Pitalito, winner of the 2006 Cup of Excellence, whose Ombligón led to a lot separation done together. In Rwanda, Muraho's regenerative pilot farm in Gisagara supplies a washed Red Bourbon.
Carolyne comes back from these trips with the coffees, the photos and the stories. The origin reports slipped into the bags bear her signature, and she is the one filming, from the greenhouse bar, the presentation of her coffees to stockists. Around her are Alastair Hesp on roasting and Ava Mees List, the restaurant's beverage director. The coffee served at the end of a meal at noma and the one that leaves in a red and cream bag come out of the same roaster, chosen by the same person.
