The Story Behind Our Roaster

Our beautiful roaster is not just another off-the-shelf machine. Like most things at Virgin Hill Coffee, it comes with a story of its own.

As many of you know, our original building burned down three years after we started the business. It was 2008, and we lost everything. The only thing left standing in the rubble was our charred roaster.

That moment forced us to rebuild quickly. The first priority was finding a new location, which we managed to secure the very next day. The second was finding a new roaster that could carry our work forward.

Finding the right machine

After months of searching and countless overseas calls, Matthew finally found it. A beautiful Italian 1959 Petroncini. The only problem was that it was sitting high in the Swiss Alps.

This was a period when Italian coffee culture was evolving rapidly. After the 1950s, espresso cafés were becoming central to daily life in Italy, and roasters like Petroncini were part of that shift. They represented a bridge between traditional drum roasting and the emerging modern espresso era, where consistency and repeatability became just as important as craftsmanship.

The previous owner had been using it to roast nuts, coffee, and cocoa beans. It was wood-fired, which immediately caught our attention. Wood roasting is actually one of the oldest forms of coffee roasting, dating back to early coffee trade routes in the Middle East and Europe, where small batches were roasted over open flame or charcoal long before modern gas systems existed.

It was not the most practical setup, but it had character, and we wanted it.

Getting it out of the Alps was no small task. It had to be loaded onto a small European flatbed truck and carefully brought down winding mountain roads. At one point, there was even a delay because part of the road had been washed out.

From there, it made its way to Bremen Ports in Germany before crossing the Atlantic in its own shipping container. It eventually arrived at the port of Montreal and was transported to our new roastery.

Bringing it back to life

When it arrived, we had the container unloaded directly inside the brulerie. We still remember the moment we cut the lock open, something we kept as part of our history.

Soon after, a local technician from Waterville, Marc Duquette, came to install the machine and bring it back into operation. We also converted it from wood to natural gas so it could be used reliably for production while still preserving its original character and design.

Today, our 30kg Petroncini roaster allows us to keep our process truly artisanal, roasting each small batch by hand with care and attention.

It is more than just equipment to us. It is part of a long tradition of coffee roasting that stretches from open-fire beginnings to modern craft roasting, and we are genuinely grateful to work with it every day.