A Flor da Selva was founded in 1950 by Manuel Alves Monteiro, who had arrived in Lisbon from Melgaço at the age of thirteen. The business started as a fine grocery on Rua da Esperança, selling teas, coffees and spices, before roasting began at Travessa do Pasteleiro 32 with a twenty kilo wood-fired CARINHAS roaster. The company is still at that address today, and still in the family. His sons Vasco and Jorge Faria Monteiro run it, with a third generation now involved.
The roasting method is what sets the house apart. The German PROBAT G120 installed in 1972 burns cork oak firewood, roasts around 120 kilos at a time at roughly 200 degrees, and takes about half an hour per batch. Everything either side of the roast is done by hand. It is one of very few wood-fired coffee roasters still working in Europe. Jorge Monteiro puts the reason simply: wood gives the coffee a personality, and a taste unlike what else is on the market.
They roast to order rather than to stock, around five tonnes a month, on the principle that coffee is a fresh product meant to be drunk soon after roasting. The range runs from house blends, Magnólia, Arábica and Orquídea, to single origins traced to the cooperative and the altitude, such as the Karagwe robusta from the KADERES cooperative in the Kagera region of Tanzania.
Between 2023 and 2024 the roastery had to leave the building entirely. The new metro tunnel at Santos runs directly underneath, and the walls and floors needed reinforcing. The PROBAT was dismantled over a month, some of its bolts calcified and had to be cut, then rebuilt on their return.
https://flordaselva.com