Artisan Roaster Three Generations Quality Espresso 101 The Perfect Shot Coffee Jargon

Miscela d'Oro is an artisan espresso from Sicily that has been carefully crafted by the Urbano family for three generations.

Today Miscela d'Oro's balanced and robust espresso flavor is quietly convincing espresso connoisseurs in more than 25 countries that there is a significant difference between the Italian industrial espresso brands a more artisan Italian espresso like Miscela d'Oro.

The First Generation

The Urbano family business began operating in 1946 with a small shop in the town center of Messina, Sicily. There the Urbanos – Umberto, aided by his wife Emanuela – began roasting small amounts of coffee and refining their artisan roasting techniques.

The fundamental rule was the meticulous selection of the very best green coffee. Founder Umberto Urbano's technical knowledge and his sensitivity towards his customers' requirements - coupled with research and his experiments to create top quality blends - transformed the artisan workshop into a small family business.

By the 1950s, the Urbano's were using the latest equipment to deliver a product whose unique flavor profile was becoming extremely popular with Sicilians.

The Second Generation

In the 1970s Umberto and Emanuela's son, Francesco, joined the family business and apprenticed with his parents to master the unique roasting processes that drew out Miscela d'Oro's distinctive, rich flavor profile. Having achieved great favor with loyal customers in Messina and throughout Sicily, the company began to focus on selling across all of Italy.

To support this expansion, new product lines were created for the larger Italian market and a blend named "5 miscele" was developed, becoming Miscela d'Oro's first big seller - and a blend that is still fondly remember today in Italy.

With new products came new efforts to market the company and Miscela d'Oro ran its first advertising campaigns in Italy.

And with new products and new territory came the demand for higher volume roasting, so it became necessary for the Urbano's to expand and modernize the company further with automated systems for storage, roasting and packaging - but with the typical characteristics of a family-run, artisan business still in place.

 

 

 

 

 

The Third Generation

In the 1990s, Umberto Urbano - the grandson of the first Umberto and son of Francesco - joined Miscela d'Oro's management team and together, Francesco and Umberto (the younger) began planning their extension of sales of Miscela d'Oro to foreign markets, believing that the world was beginning to relate to Italian espresso as an international coffee with appeal to many cultures in many regions.

To prepare for its launch into foreign markets, the company logo was restyled and several new products were developed to satisfy the needs of certain foreign customers:

• Filter coffee blends, conceived especially for the tastes of North American and Northern European customers.
• Espresso pods, which represent the future of the coffee market.

In 2000, the Urbano family also opened a new plant equipped with state-of-the-art technology and improved storage, roasting and packing capabilities. Great care was taken with design of this new plant and the selection of its new technology, so that the experience and sensitivity of three generations of coffee roasting was preserved.

Into this new production setting, the Urbano's came armed with their three generations of coffee selection, blending and roasting skills. In Messina, they continue to achieve the aromas and flavors that have enabled the company to grow and evolve for 60 years - transforming from a small workshop to a modern artisan roasting facility which balances hand-crafting with modern consistency for the finest gourmet espresso taste.

Miscela d'Oro Today

In 2006, the Urbano family decided to mark the 60th anniversary of the business by radically changing its image, entrusting this change to Italy's master of creativity and branding: Oliviero Toscani. This image transformation aimed to create a global brand, helping Miscela d'Oro customers easily understand the style and philosophy that characterize Miscela d'Oro: Quality, Elegance and Simplicity.

Miscela d'Oro enters the new millennium aiming to be one of the finest artisan espresso roasters in the world, bringing with it a past characterized by years of tradition, a present-day certainty of quality guaranteed by constant attention to every processing phase during the preparation of the blends, and a future filled with the promise to continue devoting artisan attention to preparing coffee, as a guarantee of the Urbano family and the Miscela d'Oro brand in the world.

 

 

Anecdote:

One afternoon, the doorbell rang in Peter Sellers's London flat.

As Sellers was busy in his study, his wife Anne went to the door, where she was handed a telegram. The message? "Bring me a cup of coffee. Peter."