Sanctuary Coffee Roasting Opens a Refuge for Tasting in Fresno County

The tasting room at Sanctuary Coffee Roasting in Clovis, California. All images courtesy of Vatche Moukhtarian / Sanctuary Coffee Roasting.

Chef-owned Sanctuary Coffee Roasting has opened a tasting lounge inside its production roastery in Clovis, California, offering a friendly haven for exploring coffee production and flavors. 

The lounge hosts free public cupping sessions every Wednesday and Thursday at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Each session lasts about 45 minutes and is limited to eight guests, with reservations available by text.

Sanctuary’s current program includes side-by-side coffee tasting and a set of visual tasting aids called Cup Rings, designed to make sensory evaluation more approachable.

Sanctuary owner and roaster Vatche Moukhtarian, a longtime chef and founder of Fresno’s Cracked Pepper Bistro, designed the Cup Rings as coasters that sit in front of guests. The rings use plain-language flavor and intensity cues in place of what Moukhtarian called “coffee snob vocabulary.” He leads all the cupping sessions.

Inside the Sanctuary roastery.

“The idea was a speakeasy behind a working warehouse,” Moukhtarian said. “You walk past the roaster and the pallets, open a door and the room changes.”

That change comes by way of Chesterfield sofas, brass table lamps, leather ottomans and a blue rug. Burlap coffee sacks from countries where Sanctuary sources coffee, including Brazil, Guatemala, Peru and Indonesia, line one wall, while a hand-painted coffee cherry tree mural adds another focal point. The exposed ceiling remains as a reminder that the lounge sits within a working roastery.

The Italian phrase “dolce far niente,” meaning roughly “the sweetness of doing nothing,” is painted into the mural.

“That’s the whole point of the room, and honestly the whole point of the company,” said Moukhtarian.

The Sanctuary name follows a similar idea: creating room for people to slow down with coffee.

“We all do so much in a day that we leave ourselves almost no time,” Moukhtarian said. “A quiet cup of coffee is a refuge in itself in this busy world.”  

Moukhtarian roasts to order in approximately 24-pound batches on a Primo roaster with Cropster software. 

Most of the coffee is destined for Sanctuary Coffee Refuge, Moukhtarian’s cafe in northwest Fresno. The cafe uses Eversys machines to support espresso-based drinks, which are offered alongside pourovers, sandwiches and pastries.

At the new tasting room, Moukhtarian takes a more deliberate approach to espresso with a manual ECM machine. He described it as “two rooms, two speeds, same coffee.”

That divide between speed and ritual traces back to Moukhtarian’s childhood in Lebanon, where a roaster down the street would fill the block with coffee aromas two or three times per week. It’s also where coffee was inseparable from genuine hospitality. 

“In our home, every guest was greeted with a cup. My mom, my grandmother, that was the first thing [they] did when somebody walked in. The coffee was ground almost to a powder and brewed in a jezve,” said Moukhtarian. “When the cups were empty, for fun, they’d flip them over and read fortunes in the grounds. I remember that vividly. That’s what coffee was to me before it was ever a business — a way of welcoming somebody.”

Moukhtarian also describes Sanctuary as a family operation, with his wife and children helping behind the scenes.

“My wife keeps things running behind the scenes, and when a big roast day comes she’s at the warehouse helping me label bags,” Moukhtarian said. “I couldn’t do this without them.”

Moukhtarian’s professional background is primarily in food. He is a classically trained chef with more than two decades of kitchen experience. He opened Cracked Pepper Bistro in Fresno in 2006, and in 2019 won an episode of Food Network’s “Guy’s Grocery Games.”

“Coffee wasn’t a pivot away from cooking — it’s the same work,” said Moukhtarian. “I build roast profiles the way I build recipes: balance first, then clarity, then sweetness.”

Cracked Pepper Bistro now also serves breakfast and brunch during the day, with Sanctuary coffee featured as part of the program. Meanwhile, Moukhtarian is preparing another Cracked Pepper Cafe inside Fresno City Hall. In June, the Fresno City Council approved a lease with Moukhtarian’s Culinary Studios Inc. to operate the cafe.

“The City of Fresno has trusted us with a real honor there, to be part of City Hall and take care of their staff every day. We don’t take that lightly,” Moukhtarian said. “Every location pours the same coffee we roast in small production right here in Clovis — specialty coffee, nothing else.”

Moukhtarian said he also now plans to expand Sanctuary’s retail and wholesale reach.

Sanctuary’s tasting lounge is located at 12 W. Palo Alto Ave. in Clovis, California. 

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