Gardelli Specialty Coffees

Rubens Gardelli launched Gardelli Specialty Coffees in Forlì, Italy, around 2010, starting with a 50-gram sample roaster and no formal training in the craft. What began as a personal reinvention — a pivot made when, as Green Plantation notes, he was "quite down on his luck" — grew into one of the most competition-decorated specialty roasteries in Europe, culminating in Gardelli's 2018 WCE World Coffee Roasting Championship title.

Gardelli grew up working in his parents' café but came to roasting as an autodidact, guided by sensory instinct rather than received technique. He progressed through a succession of machines — 50g to 300g, then a 700g roaster he built himself, then 5kg, and now a 15kg unit — while simultaneously stacking competition wins from 2014 onward. The operation has remained deliberately small and family-driven: his mother Cinzia handles hand-packing and labeling for every outgoing order; head barista Matteo, who met Rubens at a latte art competition in 2013, manages the flagship store.

Rubens still roasts every batch personally on the 15kg machine. His sourcing approach leans into traceability and the botanical context of each lot — his 2015 World Brewers Cup project, which centered on a single-tree lot using an embryo-focused process and manual hulling, is an early marker of that orientation. Italy Specialty Coffee characterizes the roastery as one of Italy's "pioneering specialty micro roasteries," and the production philosophy has remained consistent with that founding ethic: small volumes, direct involvement at every step.