Colonna Coffee

Colonna Coffee is based in Bath and is one of the most research-active roasteries in the UK. The business was built around Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, who won the UK Barista Championship in 2012, 2014, and 2015.

Those wins were not the end point but a platform for collaboration with scientists, inventors, and coffee experts, resulting in co-authored published papers on water chemistry, frozen grinding, and sensory science. The original Bath cafe, Colonna & Small's, was named Best Coffee Shop in Europe in 2016.

The roastery launched in 2015 to give the business more control over sourcing and roasting, and a London location on Leather Lane followed in 2023. The commercial range is structured into clearly tiered tiers: Foundation, Discovery, Rare, and Gesha, with seasonal single-origin and blend options alongside.

Colonna also sells its own water chemistry book and publishes research, making it one of the few UK roasters operating at the intersection of coffee retail and coffee science.