At home I have a Nespresso machine, it is an easy way to make a reasonable quality coffee without the need to dispose of coffee grounds. My first real coffee machine was a 15 psi DeLonghi manual pump coffee machine, I loved it for 15 years and when it was starting to get a little old I moved it down to our weekend house. So my DeLonghi manual pump coffee machine still gets a run on the weekends I am down the house.

The machine came with some complimentary illy coffee pads, I believe they were pretty common in Europe but a little difficult to source in Australia. I managed to purchase some coffee pads, they were not the right size for the dedicated holder and did not work as well as I expected so I gave away the idea of coffee pads. At the time I was purchasing locally produced Brazilliano coffee and was pretty happy.

We could not source illy coffee in Perth, the David Jones department store imported the coffee but the cost was outrageous so I limited my illy coffee consumption to trips to Europe or South East Asia. Ironic really, it was easy to source in Asia and not in Australia, fortunately, this would not last forever.

First the major supermarkets carried both ground and whole illy beans, this competition halved the cost of illy beans and people started to appreciate the intense flavours. Finally, illy Nespresso pods were released in Australia and this changed my buying habits. No longer did I need to go to a Nespresso shop to purchase their coffee pods, I could just pick up some illy Classico at my local supermarket, pop them in the machine and have quality coffee at home.