Lavazza Rossa

Italian coffee and Lavazza Rossa amongst many others. Today we’ll visit Italy and the wonderful aromas and delights of her coffee culture. I’ve been to Italy as I’ve been wont to say before and I absolutely love it. Her coffees are some of the best in the world. Lavazza is one of the prominent roasters and purveyors of coffee in Italy, much like Starbucks is here.

Lavazza also has coffee shops all over Italia. Lavazza is one of the preeminent coffee companies in the world with revenues over $1 billion US. They’ve been around since 1895 and recently entered the Indian coffee market. It is said (bragged) that Lavazza is served in 80% of Italian homes. Lavazza Rossa would likely be found in most of them.

Lavazza Rossa and other fine Italian coffees

But Lavazza Rossa is not the only Italian coffee to be enjoyed. We’ll talk briefly about Kimbo coffee, Danesi coffee and Segafredo coffee too. All wonderful additions to anyone’s coffee cupboard who wants to explore the deliciousness of Italian coffees.

Before I get started talking about these coffee, their associated coffee pods and espresso pods, I’d like to offer 2 resources for you for where I like to buy most of my coffee if it’s not in the store. The first is Amazon, which has a wide variety of Lavazza coffees including of course several sizes of Lavazza Rossa. The second is eBay which as an auction site does not consistently carry the coffees you want but you can find great prices on their Lavazza Rossa, Kimbo coffee, Danesi coffee and Segafredo coffees when you find them.

Specifics about Lavazza Rossa

The Lavazza Rossa is a medium bodied coffee with an interesting 30% blend of Robusta coffee beans. This gives the coffee a full and deep body with great roundness and great intensity. The sweetness if mild, but this is a coffee that will open your eyes in the morning and help you see the coming day. The Robusta aids in this respect, giving the coffee tremendous lift and buzz with the additional caffeine. The affects are mild and barely noticeable. The coffee itself with it’s full, bright flavor gives you the pick me up you’ll need.

Kimbo coffee offers a full line of coffees and espressos including the espresso capsule or ESE coffee pods. One of their best sellers is the Kimbo Espresso Napoletano which can be found on Amazon but as I write this, only the Napoletano espresso pods can be found on eBay. Though it’s always changing so it’ll be worth a look. But you it’s bankable at Amazon. This is a terrific coffee if you want to make traditional espresso the Napoletano way, thick creamy with the crema and sweet. The best method in my opinion (but I’m not Italian) is with a Moka pot or stove top espresso maker. I found a great recipe for Napoletano espresso over here. You can also do great espresso like this with other Lavazza coffees, just not the Lavazza Rossa.

Danesi coffee, especially Danesi Gold Beans make a wonderful espresso. Full bodied, rich and with an excellent texture. Danesi Doppio espresso beans are also worth a look as they are a new entrant into this market made from Arabica beans from South America and Africa. I haven’t tired it, but reviews suggest that the body is velvety smooth. All of these are of course available at Amazon.

All of these coffees are terrific choices if you’re looking for something similar to Lavazza Rossa but you want to branch out a bit. Segafredo coffee offers the coffee pod as well as whole beans for your choice. I usually prefer to go with whole beans and use a manual coffee grinder and espresso tamper to get it just right. The Segafredo Intermezzo espresso beans are 40% Robusta and will give you a bit of a kick out the door in the morning. I love this about Italians. They’re not afraid to use some good quality Robusta to round out their espresso beans. A lesson many of us coffee snobs in North America could learn from. We’ve seen Robusta as the ugly stepchild of coffee when in fact s/he is just part of the family and should be treated as such. You can find a full compliment of Segafredo coffee beans at Amazon too.

It thought this was going to be a shorter post than it turned out to be. But I get a bit excited talking about Italy and Italian coffees especially. If you’re looking for more of my coffee klatch on Italian coffees please check out Lavazza Blue about their coffee maker and also cialde Lavazza about their espresso pods. So please, do me a favor and explore some of the Italian coffees available. Get away from Starbucks for a bit and see what makes the Italians the godfathers of coffee roasting and coffee culture. Start with the Lavazza Rossa and move out from there.