Nespresso, the Swiss "espresso solution" brought to you by Nestle, opened its first free-standing Nespresso Boutique in North America recently on Newbury Street. One could easily mistake it for a Sephora or a LensCrafters. But don't be deceived by the research-lab interior, or the complete absence of any coffee aroma. Nespresso is using lots of science to deliver consistent quality espresso, and it's trying to make obsolete the art of the perfect espresso "pull" (sorry, home-baristas). At the Nespresso bar you can see how errors (and passion) are automated out of the art of espresso-making.
An espresso odyssey
Amid 'for rent' signs, new boutique offers sleek escape, one demitasse at a time
The long-planned and surprisingly large Boston Nespresso Boutique (they asked me not to call it a "store") is an unexpected sight on today's Newbury Street. With a glittering interior design by French architect Francis Krempp, it stands in marked contrast to the alarming number of neighboring stores now closing or scaling back in our new economic reality. Is home espresso the beverage of choice in an economic winter? Only time will tell.
The boutique has a calm, clinical, icy-white interior reminiscent of the spacecraft in "2001: A Space Odyssey." A phalanx of cute-tech cubic or cylindrical Nespresso machines is silently arrayed against one wall, while the coffees themselves, dubbed "consumable coffee pods," are geometrically mounted on the opposing wall in double-helix patterns. The resemblance to the Krempp-designed flagship Paris boutique is unmistakable.
The scientific presentation might be intended to remind us of Nespresso's "continual technological progress toward the perfect cup," but it isn't terribly appetizing. All the cute machines are for home use (they look like cast-offs from "WALL-E" and run $199-$799), and there are three large and ominous-looking models that my docent, an effusive local actress, told me are designed for office use.
The actress - let's call her Eve - leads me to the coffee bar in the back of the store (made of white frosted glass, of course) and invites me to try a cup. Actually . . . not so fast. She has an excited bit of infomercial to serve me before the coffee. Nestle developed Nespresso about 10 years ago to promote a whole new way of making coffee: sealed aluminum pods of ground coffee "specially prepared in a patented way," then loaded into an equally patented (and expensive) Nespresso machine that pressurizes the water and blasts it through the single-use pod. The Nespresso machine, of course, will accept only Nespresso pods (55 cents each). She gave me a sour look when I mentioned other pod vendors and machines by name. "Of course those pods would not work in our machines. We invented the process."
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