Georgio’s Coffee Roasters
146 W. Jericho Tpke.
Huntington Station
631-470-7977

At Georgio’s, you won’t find baristas wearing green smocks who went to coffee school. What you will discover is the purest coffee experience on LI. The 28 varieties of fresh-roasted beans you buy and the coffee in the hot latte you drink all come directly from the growers.

Georgio Testani and his Colombian-born wife Lydia opened their shop to cater to real coffee lovers, the kind of caffeine cognescenti who want to move past the Starbucks corporate culture. He started out as a truck driver to supplement his meager income as a rock guitarist, picking up tons of coffee at the Brooklyn piers, then moved up to wholesaling, procuring, roasting and, eventually, classical guitar. After six years as head coffee-meister at Fairway Market in Plainview, Georgio saw an opportunity on LI. “I couldn’t believe that no one else was doing a sustainable coffee operation,” he explains. So in July 2007, in a small Jericho Turnpike storefront, he set up the ultimate coffee shop, filled with bins of coffee beans, roasters and cloth sacks holding beans from farms in Colombia, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and other countries. He takes delivery at the store, sometimes in 130-pound cloth sacks, sometimes in Priority Mail boxes (when buying Bourbon Selecto directly from the farm in Puerto Rico). After loading his Toyota Matrix with up to 600 pounds of beans, he drives to his Babylon warehouse, roasts on the beloved 40-year-old Probat roaster from Germany, then packs the beans in airtight bags and makes the return trip back to the shop.

He’s a strong believer in sustainability. While at Fairway, he talked them into eliminating wholesalers and buying direct from farmers or brokers, creating more wealth for small farms. He traveled to those Central and South American farms, building relationships. His shop is filled with photos he took of the fields. All coffees are fair-trade certified and half the coffee sold there is organically grown. He even reuses the special bags that carry freshly roasted beans. His shop is governed by two rules: Get exceptional coffee, and reward farmers for excellence. Every morning, he stages a cupping, grinding beans and tasting an entire pot, looking for defects.

A steady stream of serious coffee drinkers stops by the store for something different—perhaps a pound or two of Galapagos Islands Organic, a sweet, medium-bodied variety, or El Salvador Bourbon Santa Rita, a full-bodied bean delivered direct from the farm.

Bodybuilder Ron Noreman and his wife Nancy Noreman are big fans. They rely on Georgio’s brews to get them through their busy day. “Without Georgio’s coffee in the morning we’re in trouble,” declared Nancy, the mother of 1-year-old twins.
Georgio’s may not be the only place you can get a cup of Jamaica Blue Mountain or Kona Fancy coffee, very expensive brews. But you can be sure that no else around has a variety called Kopi Luwak. An Asian wildcat called a palm civet devours the beans, partially digests them and defecates. Native workers (who have one of the worst jobs ever) then pick out the fermented beans. This variety goes for $20 to $30 for an 8-ounce cup. Still, claims Georgio, “Nobody says it tastes like shit.”