The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Cutting-edge La Marzocco Espresso Machine Will Help Us Serve You The Best

WAITSBURG - Ron Smith, our contractor on the coffee shop, opened the door to the Times office and could barely contain himself. We stared at him in suspense. "The espresso machine is here," he said with a big grin on his face.

I dropped everything and rushed outside with him.

A big rig from Peninsula Trucking was double-parked in front of the future Coppei Coffee Co. store on Main Street and its rollup door revealed the cavernous space inside. The delivery man was already bringing the crate towards the back of the bed and I swallowed at the heft of the occasion.

The machine we specialordered earlier this spring, the heart and soul of our coffee house, had finally arrived. From Italy!

"La Marzocco: Firenze (Florence) - Seattle," the shipping label on the crate read. "Serial #4414 - Macchine Per Caffe Espresso. Handmade in Florence."

That brought me back instantly to that beautiful Renaissance town in Tuscany where I spent a few days with Catherine, my Swiss girlfriend at the time, before heading down to Corsica on leave from the Dutch army. We weren't even 20 then .

Karen, Niko and I returned there several years ago on a trip to my cousin's place in Umbria.

Now Florence was here on Main Street. That label conjured up images of the Ponte Vecchio, Duomo and Boboli Gardens. Italy: the "Coppei" (birth place) of espresso!

The word "espresso" has a suitable double meaning in Italian, smiliar to "express" in English. It means "fast" and it means "with an express purpose," in this case a creation "expressly" made for the customer.

The espresso tradition, of course, isn't nearly as old as Renaissance Italy. It came on the world stage right after World War II in 1947, when the Gaggia company achieved pressurized brewing water technology with a spring piston.

Before that, coffee drinks were made with direct steam pressure, which meant the brewing water was too hot and destroyed the coffee oils that give it much of the flavor.

One of those early manufacturers eventually became La Marzocco. In 1927, Guissepi and Bruno Bambi launched "Officina Fratelli Bambi," which at first named its machines "Fiorenza" (Florentine) but later changed it to La Marzocco after the heraldic lion of Florence.

A seated lion with the crest of the Florentine Lily, synonym for victory and conquest, became the company logo.

Well, I felt pretty victorious seeing the machine and its accompanying Swift double grinder come in. We custom-ordered the color, burnt orange, to fit with our scheme inside the shop (not to mention to fit my European roots: the Dutch national color is orange after William of Orange, the republic's founder).

In gearing up for our coffee shop operation during the past few months, we searched and found a lot of used restaurant equipment on line with prices that warm a Dutchman's heart.

But we decided to buy the espresso machine new and from Italy. This had to be the best machine for what we want to provide: espresso like it's meant to be.

What that means to us is espresso with an intensely aromatic, freshly ground coffee flavor free of bitterness and as sweet as coffee can naturally be. Northern Italian coffee roasting calls for a shade of mahogany brown with no oils on the surface as the basis of the espresso shot.

This style brings out the most caramelized sugars in the beans before the bitterness from further roasting sets in.

The roasting, I'm learning, is just the first step in this mono-maniacal pursuit of perfection. As our store team goes through the training with Walla Walla Roastery, I'm finding there are a ton of variables that can affect the extraction process known as "pulling a shot:" humidity, temperature, sunlight, water quality, coffee freshness, packing the coffee "puck," length of the shot, grind, machine cleaning, pump pressure and so on.

Almost overwhelming for this rookie (good thing we have some experienced baristas on our staff - story on that coming up soon).

When you do a lot of volume, it's easy to speed up the "custom" process and cut corners that affect the taste of the final product.

We're quickly becoming students of a discipline and espresso-making technique developed by David Schomer, a former electrical test and measurement specialist from Kent who started Espresso Vivace in Seattle.

His "Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques" book is considered the bible for serious baristas.

"To achieve a good espresso, it is essential not to dwell on a single factor," writes Schomer, who researched and experimented on technique for many years. "To be successful, you must remain aware of all the factors and how they interrelate."

Or, as the great Japanese strategist Musashi would say: "Do not fix the eyes."

The three-group La Marzocco machine with its two boilers (one for extracting the shots, the other for steaming the milk - each requiring a different temperature) and heat stability is one of the best, if not the best tool on the market.

Now, it will be a matter of honing our ability to draw the perfect red-brown syrupy "crema" for the basis of all your velvety smooth lattes, capucchinos, Americanos, machiattos, brevas and mochas.

Benvenuta Machine Per Caffe Espresso!