The invention of espresso
espresso

How it started


Coffee has a long history in Italy. Venice was one of the first European ports to import coffee beans in the 16th century.

Italy truly emerged as the global leader in coffee thanks to Milanese inventor Luigi Bezzera. In 1901, Bezzera came up with the idea of forcing pressurized water through a handful of coffee powder to produce a short, concentrated drink:
the espresso, so called because it could be prepared expressly for each customer and because the water had to be expressed through the coffee.

Quick to make and good to wake, the espresso became a futuristic icon at the turn of the century, sharing its name with a high-speed train. Espresso machines found their place in so-called “American bars”—spaces where people would stand at the bar, saloon-style, instead of sitting down at the table.

By the late 1950s, most Italians consumed coffee at home, in the traditional moka pot—first built by engineer Alfonso Bialetti in 1933, and now an icon of Italian design worldwide, as Morris explains in his 2008 essay “A History of Espresso in Italy and the World.”