What was your childhood like?

Cremina: It couldn’t have been nicer! I spent it in Chiasso, Ticino – the most Italian part of Switzerland. Barely 50 km from Milan, where the best espresso machines are built.

Your father?
Luigi Bresaola. A great man, a tinkerer and inventor. He designed my prototype and started building it in 1967 in Morbio Inferiore.

Large company?
100 employees. In the 1970s and 1980s, 5,000 of my siblings came out yearly. We were pretty much only sold in the USA and Switzerland.

What about Italy?
Nothing. In Italy it’s all about un caffé in un – Italians don’t make espresso at home.

In 1992 your development was suddenly halted.
Yeah, tough times. Let’s skip past that – if people want to know about it, they can ask me in private.

What year shall I set the time machine to?
Late 2007. That was when the company Olympia Express was reestablished.

It can’t have been easy to switch families like that?
Yes and no. It de nitely saved me. I ended up in the canton of Glarus, at Schätti, which had been one of our former suppliers. It’s a metal processing business: turning, milling, stamping, powder-coating, welding. That kind of stuff. The people there can do everything I need to bring me to life.

What does a move from Ticino to Glarus entail?
A lot. The people there cultivate Italian cultura, together with Swiss thoroughness and reliability. Glarus is 70 km south of Zurich, in a valley just before the Klausen Pass.

You’re not worried you’ll lose your italianità?
I did briefly, but it was totally unfounded. My people managed to transfer it to Glarus. That’s Swiss thoroughness!

You are a lever espresso machine. Why don’t you have an electric pump?
I have cousins who do. But anyone who wants to create their own pressure curve and try out pre-infusion will get that only with me. 

 

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