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The Audio Long Read

From the archive: How Nespresso’s coffee revolution got ground down

The Audio Long Read

The Guardian

Society & Culture

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2020: Nestlé’s sleek, chic capsule system changed the way we drink coffee. But in an age when everyone’s a coffee snob and waste is wickedness, can it survive? By Ed Cumming. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is the Guardian. Do you hear that?

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to help keep future energy costs down for everyone and help cut UK carbon emissions

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to nothing. Sound good to you? Find out more about our Zero Carbon

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Generation at edf energy.com slash helping Britain.

0:39.8

The Guardian Archive Longree.

0:45.0

Longree. The Guardian Archive Longree. I'm Ed Cumming, I'm a senior feature writer for The Telegraph.

0:58.0

Prior to that I was a commission editor on the Observer magazine.

1:01.0

This piece, How an Espresso's Coffee Revolution got

1:04.0

ground down was published in July 2020. I'd been fascinated by Nespresso since I

1:10.4

was a student. I hadn't really drunk espresso before then,

1:14.4

and a friend bought a machine.

1:17.8

And I kind of instantly loved the feel of it

1:19.6

that were and clunk. I think to some extent learning to drink coffee is about learning to be or

1:27.9

pretending to be sophisticated and the espresso felt like the next stage up.

1:32.7

But then some years later I read a news story about the trouble

1:36.0

it was having a great patent.

1:37.8

I learned that in fact, the espresso had been invented many, many years

1:41.8

before I'd heard of it. And that kind of piqued my interest.

1:45.9

I think most of the issues of this press so that we identify in the piece have kind of carried

1:51.9

on since then in the three years since.

...

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