John M. Gant

Master coffee roaster John M. Gant passed away peacefully at home in Trumansburg, New York on January 12, 2026, following a brief illness. John was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1942 and is survived by his wife of 60 years, Alice, his sister Barbara Gant in Phoenix, Arizona, and his daughter Anne, son-in-law Pinaki, and grandson Paul, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

John Gant's education includes a BA from the University of Arizona (1964), an LLM from Cornell Law School (1967), and an MBA from Alaska Pacific University (1992). He worked as a Legal Aid lawyer in Seattle, San Francisco, and Anchorage, before turning his enthusiastic energy to coffee roasting. As Master Roaster, he roasted more than a million pounds of specialty coffee and was an expert in roasting, cupping coffee, green inventory, blending, and brewing technology.

John met Alice when they were freshmen at the University of Arizona. A few years later when he moved to attend Cornell Law School, Alice took a job nearby in Trumansburg to teach about art.

Following his graduation, the couple moved to Seattle, where Alice continued as a teacher and artist while he worked for Legal Services, specializing in migrant farm worker and Native American rights, and their daughter Anne was born. Soon after, they moved to San Francisco, where he first became enchanted with espresso in the 1970’s Italian cafes of North Beach. But it wasn’t until they moved to Anchorage that John, while still working as a lawyer, began to focus seriously on coffee, helping to open Kaladi Brothers Coffee, one of the early roasteries in Alaska.

When Anne moved to NYC to attend art school, John and Alice returned to the Finger Lakes region in New York State, where John helped develop the award-winning local favorite, Gimme Coffee. As the master roaster, he also trained and mentored countless baristas and roasters. As an expert coffee consultant, he also travelled to many coffee-growing regions of the world and often told marvelous tales of his adventures to visitors at the roastery.

In later years, he was well known in the Trumansburg community as a man of great enthusiasm and short attention span. Constantly in motion, he never liked to sit down, loved a spontaneous celebration, was known for conjuring snacks for visitors, and enjoyed being outside, usually drinking a fancy beer, cooking on a grill, tinkering with fire pits, roasting coffee, biking, or lifting weights, which he did into his eighties. He kept busy with many community projects, including helping to build structures for the Ithaca Children’s Garden and the Trumansburg Farmers Market, and often stood with his neighbors for political, social, and environmental causes. He will be greatly missed by many.

A gathering will be planned for the summer.

Early in life John found guidance in the Boy Scouts, which shaped his character and strong moral code. He was proud to achieve the top ranks of Eagle and God and Country Scout. “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally sound.“