William Jameison grew up in Rhinebeck, and worked much of his life in restaurants: first in Rhinebeck and Kingston, and later down in Florida. 

He and his wife, Alexandria, met while opening the Flying Fish Café, a restaurant in Walt Disney World. They married, had two kids, and lived for a decade-and-a-half in Florida, before moving back to the Hudson Valley about 10 years ago. William now manages Rhinebeck Wine & Liquor, while Alexandria works as a teacher with immigrant and refugee children in the Albany area.

The couple had purchased their morning cup o’ joe from JB Peel, a long running, small batch coffee company in Red Hook (favorite brews: Ethiopian Yirgacheffe and the Tivoli Roast). So when Alexandria noticed a tiny for-sale flier last winter in the store, the Jameisons reached out. 

Owner, roaster, and proprietor Gil Klein, it turned out, was very sick, and in the last stages of a battle with cancer. Klein, a roaster and flavored-tea maker in California, had founded the company in 1989 with its namesake, Jeremy Peel, a Kenyan-born Englishman who had grown up on a coffee plantation and who wanted to move into full-time roasting. Peel passed away in 1991, leaving Klein to develop and grow the business into what it is today, making custom blends for local restaurants and generally pioneering house-roasted coffee at a time when such things were not terribly common on the east coast.