De’Longhi has recently launched the La Specialista Arte, a manual machine designed to provide an authentic barista experience for the home user.
According to De’Longhi brand ambassador and multi-award-winning barista champion, Craig Simon of Criteria Coffee, the Arte delivers on this perfectly.
“The Arte is the ideal starter machine for anyone keen to get into barista coffee-making at home. I love the simplicity and how the machine focuses on quality fundamentals at a reasonable price. It’s light, small, and makes great coffee,” Simon says.
“As a professional, it’s enjoyable to use. It provides the user with more control, while making some of those controls easier to manage. It’s a straight-forward machine and it gives those at an entry level the opportunity to hone their barista skills without too much financial investment,” he adds.
“One of the strongest features is the steam wand – it makes remarkable texture for a domestic machine. A lot of domestic machines don’t deliver on this feature, but the Arte provides the same sort of texture you’d get in a café. It almost behaves like a professional machine on this front.”
Additionally, Simon cites the intuitive interface and in-built grinder as winning attributes.
“It has a number of features that are handy, including an intuitive interface with buttons on the front so people can grasp how to adjust the grind, dose and temperature profiles very quickly,” he explains.
“It has a dosing station and dosing funnel that helps the grind come into the centre, which is good. Having the grinder as part of the machine is a huge benefit for people at home. Otherwise, they’ll be inclined to buy pre-ground beans, which compromise on fresh beans.”
While simplicity is central to La Specialista Arte’s design, the research and development of the machine has been both intricate and complex.
According to De’Longhi Australia product trainer, Cheryl Bosworth, the Arte benefits from the extensive research done for the La Specialista family machines Maestro and Prestigio.
“We specifically researched and identified key pain points for consumers when using manual espresso machines at home. When surveying consumers, words and phrases that came up when describing the manual process were frustrating, takes time, messy, fiddly, complicated, wasteful, coffee tastes awful and inconsistent,” Bosworth explains.
La Specialista Arte seeks to tackle those challenges by giving users the tools and technology they require to make excellent espresso coffee, while keeping the manual process simple and mess free.
“We’ve provided all the barista tools so the process of creating your favourite coffee can be authentic and fun, including keeping in-built technologies such as the active temperature control, a hidden gem on the Arte. There are also dual heating systems to ensure the coffee temperature is stable and consistent and you can quickly changeover to the powerful steam wand to texture milk,” she adds.
“This machine is suited to anyone who wants complete control of the manual process with a splash of fun. To me this is the coffee purist. They want delicious espresso easily and love having the barista tools to create the best coffee.
“Being a manual machine, the Arte does take some skill to use so it really is for the person who wants to take the time to learn and enjoy coffee.”