Italy is, of course, the home of the Espresso.
In 1905, the La Pavoni Ideale was the first so-called Espresso machine* to enter production, using pressure brewing to speed up the process. Each customer could have their own “expressly” brewed cup of coffee instead of being served from the communal urn. It tasted like concentrated drip-brewed coffee.
In the 1980s, when a Swiss engineer who worked for Nestlé went on holiday to Italy with his Italian wife, she promptly asked him to come up with a coffee as good as the one she was drinking.
Soon after, Nespresso Company was born, and we’ve been crafting coffee ever since.
Italy, the home of Espresso, is famed for its thriving coffee culture
To develop an intense Espresso, our thoughts naturally returned to Italy again, specifically Naples. We surveyed the city’s best bars (where Italians typically drink their coffee), visited the local expert coffee roasters and went on to create the Ristretto, a Neapolitan classic with a Nespresso twist.
This powerful blend has the highest number of coffees from different countries in our range. We’ve very carefully blended them to bring out a bright note, setting it apart from other Ristrettos.
It includes Arabica beans from southern Colombia’s high plateaux, which develop fine, fruity and slightly acidic aromas due to the soil and the use of the wet method, which involves fermenting coffee to loosen the fruit surrounding the beans, then washing it off with water.
The perfect roast is essential to bringing out a coffee’s best characteristics
We also use an Arabica grown on Brazilian hillsides and processed by the dry method (the beans are dried while they’re still whole then hulled) to bring out their character and maximise body. And we’ve added East African Arabicas for their fine acidic notes.
We use the time-honored Neapolitan technique of split-roasting, which is roasting coffee beans of a similar density together to bring out their best characteristics and blending the portions back together after roasting.
We quickly roast together two of the washed Arabicas, while we give the Brazilian Arabica and a Robusta (both processed by the dry method) a much longer dual roast to generate strength and character.
Clearly, we’ve got a lot to thank Naples for.
