Sevengrams was founded in Milan in late 2009 by Mary, Angelita, Anna and Daniela Mauro, four sisters from a family with a long history in coffee roasting who had sold their shares in the family business the year before. The 7Gr brand takes its name from the seven grams of ground coffee a perfectly extracted espresso needs, and its mission is an excellent, simply perfect espresso. The 7Gr range is espresso blends and single origins made with premium commercial-grade beans.

Lot Zero is the specialty line, launched in 2018 with Chiara Bergonzi, an SCA trainer, three-time Italian latte art champion and WCE head judge, who co-founded the project and selects, blends and roasts its coffees. Roastery Lot Zero sits in an old Milanese courtyard next to the Valparaiso Coffee Studio, with a 6 kg Giesen roaster and a three-group Slayer, the first installed in Italy; the space also hosts bespoke courses, team-building days and private events.

The two Coffee Studios are not cafés in the traditional sense. Valparaiso, in the same courtyard, is a shop and tasting space for coffee and equipment, used by professionals and enthusiasts. Corso Venezia, near Porta Venezia, serves more than twenty coffees, blends and single origins, as espresso, filter and batch brew, with takeaway coffee and a retail selection of freshly roasted coffee and brewing equipment. Sevengrams is an SCA Certified Training Campus and runs courses from latte art to roasting. It buys only from suppliers with certifications such as Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance and Organic, and prints a QR code on every pack for supply-chain traceability. The current retail range, the 7Gr blends and single origins and the Lot Zero lots, is listed below with the roaster’s own tasting notes.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Sevengrams