At the foot of the Schlern, where the Dolomites rise like silent giants and the air is thin and clean, Valentin Hofer roasts coffee the way his mountains taught him: slowly, patiently, with respect for what came before.
When Valentin Hofer started roasting coffee in 1995, he had no mentor, no formal training, and no shortcuts — just a used roasting machine and the will to teach himself everything. Every mistake cost him time and money, because no one was there to show him the way. That experience shaped him.
Today, Valentin passes on exactly what he was missing back then: at his training center in Völs am Schlern, he offers coffee courses for students and anyone curious in South Tyrol — real knowledge, handed over directly, without the long, costly detour of learning everything through trial and error.
His sense of responsibility doesn't stop at the roastery door. Through direct partnerships with coffee farms like Finca Rio Colorado and Finca el Mirador in Honduras, Caroma supports fair wages for local farmers as well as reforestation projects that protect the rainforest in the growing regions.
For Valentin, true coffee craftsmanship is inseparable from responsibility — for the people who grow it, for the nature that makes it possible, and for the next generation, to whom he passes on the knowledge he never had himself.