The five days of La San Marco at the Sigep in Rimini came to an end. With its 210 square metre multi-purpose exhibition area, the world’s leading manufacturer of coffee machines won over visitors fascinated by the temporary museum set up with its most representative examples and by the performances at the Leva Contest. “For this edition of Sigep we chose to make ourselves fully known, not only by presenting the company’s innovations, our history and the efficiency of our machines to the public. Everyone showed great attention to our proposals,’ declares General Manager Roberto Nocera. Yesterday saw the finals of the Leva Contest Speed and Leva Contest Sensory, the two competitions in which the best baristas compete in preparing the most espressos in one hour and the best espresso in fifteen minutes. And just yesterday, Wednesday 24 January, the last day of the Sigep, Andrea Rodio and Sharon De Pasquale from Isola Capo Rizzuto (Crotone) broke the world record recorded to date: the pair dispensed 787 cups of coffee in one hour. Before them, Alice Cernecca and Ebe Sai Crescente from Trieste held the record with 785 cups of espresso prepared in one hour. Instead, Gianluca Tofani from Riccione was the undisputed winner of the Leva Contest Sensory at Sigep 2024. Gianluca showed extraordinary skill in extracting the best espresso in terms of body, taste and sensory characteristics. with the La San Marco lever machine, thus winning the title of champion.

“The Leva Contest, of which we are sponsors, is an extraordinary opportunity to raise awareness of the world of espresso and the performance of our lever machines,” reports Nocera, who adds, “It is nice to see how the culture of coffee crosses our country and the world, just think that the previous record holders were the two baristas from Trieste, Cernecca and Crescente, and even before that, the Neapolitan Francesco Costanzo. The contest also made stops last year in Thailand and China where, however, none of the participants achieved a result that challenged that of the Italians.