The Story of our Roaster: From Switzerland to You!

Our beautiful roaster is not just any bought-off-the-shelf kinda roaster. Like most things Virgin Hill, there is a story to it…

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

We had to rebuild – and quickly! First thing on the list was finding a new location, which we managed to do the very next day. The next step was finding a fantastic roaster.

After months of searching and overseas calls, Matthew found it! A beautiful Italian 1959 Petroncini. But… it was high in the Swiss Alps.

The owner had been using it to roast nuts, coffee, and cocoa beans. It was wood-burning – cool, but not ideal. But it was love and we wanted it. They had to use a mini European flatbed truck to get it down the winding roads in the Alps. There was even a delay because part of the road had been washed out! It was brought to port in Germany, Bremen Ports, and took a quick boat ride across the Atlantic in it’s very own luxury accommodations/container! It arrived at the port in Montreal and was transported to our new Brulerie.

When it arrived we had the container unloaded right in the Brulerie and we had the excitement of cutting the lock, which we have kept:

Then we had a local guy from Waterville, Marc Duquette, who came to install the machine. We had to have the machine converted from wood to natural gas.

Our 30kg machine allows us to keep our process artisanal, roasting each small batch by hand. We love our roaster!