The Pombay story
Our Story — From East Africa to Amsterdam
The Pombay story starts with a shared idea between an Amsterdam coffee roaster and a distillery: take extraordinary East African ingredients, keep them traceable to origin, and finish them by hand in Amsterdam.
Wide East African landscape at dawn — the origin of the Pombay story
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The collaboration
Two Amsterdam houses, one bottle.
Pombay is the meeting point of two crafts that rarely share a bottle: specialty coffee roasting and distilling.
Amsterdam roaster
Steans Beans, a specialty coffee roaster in Amsterdam, sources and roasts the East African coffee at the heart of the liqueur — the same obsession with origin that Pombay is built on.
Spirited Union distillery
Spirited Union, the Amsterdam distillery behind Pombay, turns Eswatini sugarcane into spirit — the clean base for the vodka and the backbone of the coffee liqueur.
The roaster and the distiller together in the Amsterdam workspace
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Origin
Farmed in East Africa.
The cane comes from Eswatini; the coffee from East African MicroLots; the cacao from Africa and the vanilla from Uganda. These aren't commodity inputs bought on a spot market — they're chosen crops from named places, grown by the farmers who know that ground best.
An East African smallholding — hands and crop in close focus
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Provenance
Traceable to origin.
Every ingredient can be traced back to where it grew. Traceability isn't a marketing line for us — it's how we choose what goes in the bottle, and it's what lets us tell you exactly where your drink comes from. From field to still, the chain stays short and honest.
The Spirited Union distillery interior, still and light
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The promise
Born in Africa. Built in Amsterdam.
It's more than a tagline — it's the whole method. The flavour is African: cane, coffee, cacao, vanilla, grown at origin. The craft is Amsterdam: roasted and distilled with the precision of two houses who care where things come from. Pombay is what happens when the two meet.
Stock a story worth telling.
Pour East African cane spirits with real provenance behind them. Tell us about your venue and we'll send samples and trade pricing.
Trade enquiries and samples for on- and off-trade.