Ask the Roaster
Click the link to hear more from Beth, head roaster at Colonna.
About
Colonna is driven by how exciting and incredible coffee can be, the character, flavour, and experience it can generate.
We look at how to achieve and realise this quality. Overturning norms and stigma to find the true quality is what drives us.
We seek to innovate and positively disrupt to explore and maximise quality.
An epiphany experience with coffee a decade ago in Melbourne Australia transformed coffee for Maxwell. Coffee went from being a dull bitter stimulant to being a complex culinary product. It quickly became his passion, giving up his vocation as a portrait artist and pouring all of his energies into exploring coffee, learning about it and trying to understand this amazing beverage, everything it has to offer and what it means to people.
Maxwell and his wife Lesley set up their first coffee company providing lovingly crafted coffees at events around the UK. Travelling far and wide, the couple brewed espresso through the night for revellers at music festivals and rain-soaked crowds at regattas.
This was fun, but they quickly wanted a physical space to build something special for people from far and wide to visit, as well as creating a hub to explore coffee. The fruit of this vision is the store Colonna and Small’s in Bath, which is dedicated to showcasing coffee as a drink full of flavour, complexity and experience.
The search for perfection in coffee quickly meant the beckon of coffee competitions came calling. Barista championships comprise of an intense 15 minutes with a Ted-talk-like presentation, 12 drinks, a load of judges and a sound track. Barista competitions provide a creative and explorative arena for the speciality coffee community. Maxwell went on to win the UK title three times and made it to three consecutive World Barista Championship finals.
Colonna Coffee is an evolution of this journey, bringing together experience, expertise and passion to build a sourcing and roasting company that curates and presents incredible coffee. The goal of this company is to think big, to wonder how good coffee can be, to wonder how we can innovate to achieve this.
Dog and Hat
Almost everyone knows Colonna Coffee and Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood's scientific exploits are legendary.
Historically we haven't brought the 'Big Guns' of the UK coffee industry into the subscriptions, rather focusing on the smaller and less obvious roasters that are out there.
However, it was only going to be a matter of time before we asked Colonna if they wanted to work with us (especially as their name kept coming up again and again in our 'Dream Roaster' poll in The Stomping Ground).
Luckily, we managed to get to them just at the point when Beth (their head roaster) was profiling an amazing Rwanda coffee... so we had to get them in straight away, and we're sure you're going to love their coffee as much as we do.
