This April, the Glasgow Coffee Festival named Thomson's Coffee the Best Roaster in the UK. The announcement came on the festival's final day at The Briggait, a few miles from the roastery where we've worked since 1841. Winning is special. Winning in Glasgow, in front of our own coffee community, is something else entirely.
A competition judged by roasters
Best Roaster UK is a wonderfully honest test. Finalists from across the country each receive the same green coffee and roast it to their own specification, alongside a second coffee they've sourced themselves to represent their style. Every entry is then blind cupped by the other competitors and the festival's industry partners. There are no logos on the table and no reputations in the room. Just coffee, tasted by the people who know it best.
That's what makes this one mean so much. Our peers, roasters we admire across Scotland, England and Wales, tasted our work without knowing it was ours, and placed it first.
Festival-goers agreed. Alongside the judges' award, Thomson's also took home the Public's Choice, voted for by the thousands who tasted their way through the weekend. Congratulations to Tilted Coffee and Lincoln and York, who completed the podium.
Jonathan's roast
The coffees were roasted by Jonathan Martinez, our head roaster. Jonathan grew up in Ahuachapán, a coffee-growing region in northwestern El Salvador, and spent his childhood around the farms there. He moved to Glasgow in 2016, joined Thomson's packing beans in the warehouse, and worked his way to the roastery, learning the craft bag by bag, batch by batch.
His winning roast drew on those early years among the coffee trees of his hometown. "Coffee felt like a link to my culture and my people," Jonathan says. "Glasgow has given me a home, and I'm absolutely thrilled to bring this prize to the city."
We think that says everything about how coffee works at its best: connecting a farm in El Salvador to a roastery in Glasgow, through the hands of someone who knows and loves both.
A festival worth celebrating
The award capped a record year for the Glasgow Coffee Festival: its twelfth, with 52 exhibitors and close to 3,000 visitors filling The Briggait, all keeping to the festival's single-use cup ban that makes it the most sustainable coffee festival in the world. Our thanks to founder Lisa Lawson and her team for building something Glasgow can be proud of, and to every roaster who put their coffee on the cupping table.
Taste what we do
The winning roast has been enjoyed to the very last bag, and we take that as a compliment. The care behind it goes into every coffee that leaves the roastery. You'll find our range at our shops in Giffnock and the Gallowgate, at 1841 on Vinicombe Street and in Hyndland, at Burnfield Bakery and, freshly roasted, in our online shop.
One hundred and eighty-five years of roasting in Glasgow, and still learning. Elevating coffee, since 1841.
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