Gardelli Specialty Coffees is a roaster in Forlì, Italy, run by Rubens Gardelli. The family ran a bar from 1982 to 1985, and in 2002 Rubens joined the management of his mother Cinzia’s bar, Santa Fè. He began roasting at home in October 2008, won the Italian roasting championship four years running from 2014 to 2017 and the world roasting title in 2017. A new facility followed in 2017, and the company was incorporated as Gardelli Specialty Coffees in 2018.

Every coffee goes through Rubens’s blind cupping protocol and is chosen for taste, not for the variety or the farmer’s name. Lots are traceable and from fresh crops, and each price reflects a quality score and a rarity score. Each lot is tested with several roast profiles, and one roast serves both espresso and filter. Roasting happens three times a week on a customised drum roaster, an optical sorter removes beans outside the target colour, and coffee ships on its roast day in compostable cellulose bags.

Santa Fè closed in 2020 and became the Caffeteca, Gardelli’s flagship store in Forlì, with “no aperitifs, no lunches, just the perfectly pulled shots and masterfully extracted filters”. Espresso comes from a La Marzocco Leva, and each coffee is served with a small glass of the ground coffee to smell. The range is mostly single lots, from Ethiopia, Kenya, Colombia, Peru, India and Central America, with rarer lots in the Premium Rarities, alongside Cignobianco, the espresso blend of Brazil and Ethiopia that has been part of the range since the beginning.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Gardelli Specialty Coffees