Our Story
What’s good for the soil, is good for the soul.
In the entire lifecycle of coffee production, from the farm to your cup, we are probably the least interesting step in the process.
In fact when it comes to coffee, we think of ourselves as translators — our goal is to translate the coffee into an experience you can appreciate for its sense of origin and enjoy the character that defines the coffee.
We are an independent roaster located in Port Chester, NY. We source our coffee direct from small producers and through a variety of transparent and traceable methods that insure the farmers we work with are paid fair trade wages and more often than not, much higher than fair trade averages.
The variety and availability is based on seasonal harvest.
Why name it Wellborn?
When Cody Dennison (Co-Owner) was growing up, his family had a small farm (approx. 27 acres) in Wellborn, Texas, just outside of College Station (home of Texas A&M University). He picked up his love of planting, harvesting and working the land then (except for the brutally hot summers spent cutting back the wild Yaupon which – little did we know then – is the only native North American plant that contains caffeine).
Those experiences in Wellborn, TX inspired what would eventually become Wellborn Coffee.
Welcome to Arbeláez, Colombia and... Mexico, Guatemala, Cost Rica, and… Honduras, Brazil, Ethiopia, and…Yemen, Sulawesi, Kenya and…
Aziz Colmenares (Co-Owner & Farm Relationship Manager) and his family own Finca Brasil, in Arbeláez, about an hour and a half south of Bogota in Cundinamarca a state in Colombia. The farm is managed onsite by Aziz’s sister Lurdes Duque. Their Mother and Stepfather bought the farm in 1983 intentionally to grow a holistic focused social project that included medicine, education and a biodynamic farm that not only produced organic coffee, but also raised other crops such as banana, hibiscus, mangos, cilantro and many other crops as well as a non kill farm which included stables, cows, goats and their very own apiary.
Over the years the family weathered a terribly violent political climate and managed to stay relevant making their message of social responsibility persistent even today. In the face of adversity Finca Brasil doubled down on their approach and even as recently as 2019 planted 3,500 trees increasing their coffee lots to about 8 hectares.
Once the coffee is milled and bagged, we drive it to Bogota, fill out the paperwork and put it on a plane to JFK. One or two days later we pick it up. From farm to roaster it takes about 4-5 days… add another 2-3 days for free shipping and you are drinking a farm to cup of coffee 8 days from harvest.
In addition to our partner farm, we work with other producers, collectives and their import and export partners. We focus on coffees that we can trace back to the lot, farm or producer or collective. Whenever possible we import the coffee ourselves using Fair Trade and Direct Trade standards.
Better coffee from the ground up.
Wellborn’s mission is to source the finest single-origin beans from family-owned farms and farmer collectives from around the world. We hunt down these rare coffees, create relationships with the farms and then roast the beans to exacting profiles.
Our goal is to create the freshest most distinctive coffee you can find anywhere.
OUR ORGANIZING PRINCIPAL
We work with farms directly whenever possible and often import the coffee ourselves. Our partner farm Finca Brasil, in Arbeláez, Colombia is the crown jewel of our direct trade program.
We use rigorous methods to hone in on what a coffee’s potential can be; we talk to farmers directly, importers and coffee experts, then research roasting profiles, roast samples, cup, then batch roast 15-20 lbs. at a time and test it in our partner cafe Sunshine Coffee Roaster in Larchmont. We then repeat this entire process as many times as it takes until we dial into the the best expression of the coffee.
We roast with 100% zero emissions on a Bellwether Roaster.
Our mantra: What is good for the soil, is good for the soul.