Every morning, shortly after 7 a.m., Thomas Reinach walks through the doors of the Maison Soleil roastery, a stone’s throw from Marseille’s Vieux-Port. The smell of freshly roasted coffee already fills the street. At an average of [CHIFFRE:nombre de kilogrammes torréfiés par semaine] kilos a week, the workshop remains deliberately small. “We don’t roast to fill pallets, we roast to let each lot speak,” Thomas sums up.
From Trieste to La Joliette
Before co-founding Sunshine Corp SAS in April 2021, Thomas spent six years running the workshop of an artisan Parisian roastery, after training in Trieste, the Italian city where roasting is passed down like an art. A certified Q Grader — the Specialty Coffee Association’s tasting standard — he is today the guardian of the profile of every coffee that leaves for our subscribers and business accounts.
His desk? A stainless steel table between the density sorter, the bag stapler and a row of cupping bowls. Around him, the bags of green coffee bear the names of the five partner cooperatives: Terres de Nyungwe in Rwanda, Soleil du Cavally in Côte d’Ivoire, Les Hauts de Boyo in Cameroon, Rives du Kivu in the DRC, and Route d’Antananarivo in Madagascar.
The craft, in three stages
Roasting begins long before the drum heats up. Thomas first examines the green coffee’s moisture, its density, its screen size. “A bean from Rwanda Nyungwe, grown at 1,700 metres, has nothing in common with a robusta from the Cavally loop, at 400 metres. You don’t apply the same profile to them.”
Then comes the curve: progressive heating, first crack, development. For bright origins like the Ethiopia Yirgacheffe or the Madagascar Route d’Antananarivo, Thomas stops shortly after first crack. For bold blends like the Corsé du Vieux Port, he pushes to a dark roast that reveals bitter cocoa and woody notes. Finally, cooling stops the roast to the exact degree. “Three seconds more, and the profile changes,” Thomas explains.
At Maison Soleil, we favour slow roasting on medium-sized drums. It costs more in machine time, but it develops the aromas in depth without burning the bean’s sugars. It is also a way of respecting the producers’ work: when Camille Vasseur, our Head of Sourcing, negotiates a floor price [CHIFFRE:pourcentage au-dessus du cours mondial] above the world market price with each cooperative, every lot deserves the same care.
As it leaves the roaster, every bag is labelled with its roast date, its origin, its altitude and its three-word tasting note. The Rwanda — Terres de Nyungwe will leave today with “jasmine, white peach, orange blossom”. The Côte d’Ivoire — Soleil du Cavally will carry “bitter cocoa, cedar wood, blond tobacco”.
Thomas ends his morning with a blind tasting with the team. “Whole bean is the king format of the house. When our customers grind at home, they feel the freshness we preserved.” Roasting, he sums up, is above all about listening to a bean.