- Ducati's new coffee maker celebrates "100 years of Italian engineering"
- The machine takes Nespresso pods, and is made by a Swiss company
- It's available to pre-order now for about $2,000 / £1,500 / AU$2,800
To mark its 100th anniversary, motorcycle brand Ducati has launched a premium espresso machine bedecked with dials and badges. At first glance it's a fun novelty, but one that makes sense — Italy is the home of espresso, after all — but the closer you look, the stranger it gets.
First of all, despite its size and heft, the Ducati Barista M3 1926 Limited Edition Carbon Fiber (as it's catchily named) isn't a manual espresso machine, or a super automatic. It doesn't use fresh beans at all. Instead, it uses Nespresso Original pods. Those can be fine, if you choose the right ones, but aren't the typical choice for coffee connoisseurs.
Secondly, the company that Ducati has commissioned to "celebrate 100 years of Italian engineering" isn't Italian at all. Cuisine Barista (which specializes in premium Nespresso machines) is Swiss.
Something else that strikes me as strange is the claim that the M 1926 has the "world's first integrated milk frother", which can "elevate your lattes and cappuccinos with perfectly frothed milk right in the cup that comes with your machine." Perhaps Cuisine Barista's system works in a different way, but the Lavazza Assoluta I tested last year also steams and foams milk directly inside a special cup.
In a YouTube video marking the launch, Cuisine Barista proudly proclaims that "the Barista M3 1926 Limited Edition Carbon Fiber by Ducati is the only true carbon-fiber capsule coffee machine in the world," which is so specific it's almost certainly true.
It does have some appealing features though, including a PID controller to maintain the ideal water temperature, a descaling alarm, and a heating time of just seven seconds.
Get your motor running
It's not the first time I've seen a motorcycle brand release a coffee maker. Last year, BMW released an espresso machine built around an R 18 Big Boxer motorcycle engine. It looked frankly bizarre, but underneath the surface lay a properly specced brewer, with dual boilers (one for coffee and one for steam) and a pressure dial for each one, professional-grade steam and hot water valves, and a shot counter so you can see when it's time to backflush the brew group to remove residue.
It's something that could sit quite happily and usefully on the bar of a small and very expensive coffee shop, if the owner had €7,900 (about $9,100 / £6,900 / AU$14,000) burning a hole in the pocket of their leathers.
Compared to the Big Boxer, the Ducati Barista M3 1926 Limited Edition Carbon Fiber is downright affordable, with a price tag of 1,599 Swiss Francs, which equates to about $2,000 / £1,500 / AU$2,800. Tempted? You can pre-order one now (in white, red, or black) for a deposit of about $130 / £100 / AU$190 for delivery in October.
Alternatively, take a look at our roundup of the best Nespresso machines for some more modestly-priced options.
