Equipment retailer Seattle Coffee Gear has launched its own brand of consumer espresso equipment called Diletta Espresso. The first two machines under the Diletta brand, the Diletta Bello and the Diletta Mio, recently became available for purchase in the United States.

All products released under the sub-brand, which is wholly owned and operated by Seattle Coffee Gear (SCG), will be sold exclusively through the company’s website and its three retail stores in Washington State and California.

The Bello and the Mio were designed by SCG’s product and repair teams in collaboration with engineers Stefano Chinaglia and Angelo Maccarone from the Northern Italy-based equipment manufacturer Quick Mill.

“Diletta is an integral part of the growth plan for Seattle Coffee Gear,” Seattle Coffee Gear Senior Marketing Manager Kelli Rognlie told Daily Coffee News. “In fact, the icon of Diletta is a heart and the SCG gear merged into one.”

Starting at $1,699, the Diletta Bello features a 58-millimeter, E61-type group head and a heat-exchanger system for heating the brew water drawn from an onboard 3-liter reservoir. Its frame, case and 1.8-liter boiler are all made of stainless steel.

“We started with the Quick Mill 0981 (Rubio) as a solid base model to use as our blueprint,” Rognlie said. “After multiple design iterations, we landed on improvements like a stainless steel boiler, better insulation, and upgraded ergonomics and finishes throughout to take the Bello into a machine in its own right.”

The more compacts Mio machine also features a 58-millimeter group head for which water is heated in a PID-controlled, 400-milliliter brass boiler with a relatively large heat element for fast recovery. A short path from the boiler to the group is designed to minimize heat loss. The PID temperature display screen doubles as a shot timer, and its 2-liter reservoir slides out from the side, similar to the Quick Mill Silvano.

“While sharing some similarities with the Quick Mill Silvano, [the Mio] is a ground-up machine with an all-new case, PID, energy-saving features, and a ton of ergonomic and material design tweaks,” said Rognlie. “It was a bit of a passion project on our end, hence its name: literally ‘Mine’ in Italian.”

The brand name, Diletta, translates to “beloved” in Italian.

Since its founding by Victor Gehlen in 2005, Seattle Coffee Gear has helped countless customers delve into or refine home espresso, through offering manual, semi-automatic and fully automatic machines alongside grinders, coffee brewers and even coffees through sales relationships with an array of equipment brands. Creating a brand all its own has been a goal of the company for years, according to Rognlie.

“We’re finally in a place, internally, where we have all the people in the right places to represent the brand as intended,” Rognlie said. “The market also seems ready for some new innovation to match all of the new people ready to make good espresso at home.”

The company does have plans to expand the Diletta product line, including variations on the core machines and a Diletta grinder.

“The sentiment and company motto behind SCG’s brand, ‘make coffee you love’ informs almost every decision on the custom design of our Diletta machines,” said Rognlie. “The goal from the outset: build and offer products that help new and returning espresso drinkers make better coffee than was available to them before.”