Specialty Coffee Wiki

Espresso Vivace

Properties3
descriptionThe small Seattle coffee company founded in 1988 by David Schomer and Geneva Sullivan that roasts in a Northern Italian style, calls itself "the caramel coffee," and is where latte art was popularised in the United States.
tagsroaster, cafe, united-states, seattle, espresso, latte-art
aliasesVivace, Espresso Vivace Roasteria, Vivace Roasteria, Espresso Vivace Alley 24

7 min read

Espresso Vivace

Espresso Vivace is a coffee roaster and café company in Seattle, Washington, founded in 1988 as a partnership between David Schomer and Geneva Sullivan.12 It is tiny by industry standards — two cafés and one roastery — and disproportionately influential: it is the business where latte art was turned into a teachable craft in the United States, and where the idea of holding espresso brew water at a fixed temperature was worked out in public.2

The company explains its own name as translating “loosely as great enthusiasm and excitement for espresso, the new world coffee.”1 Vivace is a musical marking meaning lively, and the house style follows suit — dark-ish, sweet, built for milk drinks, and deliberately not the bright, fruit-forward roast most of third-wave specialty coffee moved towards.

Key facts

AttributeDetail
TypeRoaster and café company (partnership)
Founded1988, Seattle, Washington
FoundersDavid Schomer and Geneva Sullivan
First siteA coffee cart at 5th and Union, downtown Seattle, serving financial-district workers2
RoastingIn-house since 1992, Northern Italian style1
Cafés todayBrix (flagship, Capitol Hill) and Alley 24 (South Lake Union)34
ClosedThe separate Broadway bar, May 20232
BlendsVita, Dolce, and a Swiss Water decaf5
Known forPopularising latte art in the US; PID brew-temperature control2

What it roasts

Vivace roasts its own coffee and has done since 1992, in what it calls the Northern Italian style: “searching the world for the mildest arabicas and bringing each bean in our blends to the fragrant peak of caramelized sugar content. Vivace is, literally, the caramel coffee.”1

Unpacking that: “mildest arabicas” means green coffee chosen for low acidity and no sharp edges rather than for a distinctive origin character, and “the fragrant peak of caramelized sugar” means taking the roast far enough that the browning reactions have turned the bean’s sugars into caramel sweetness, but stopping before the roast tips into bitterness and smoke. It is a house taste, described in sensory language, not a measurable roast specification — there is no published Agtron number or roast curve behind it.

Three blends carry the range:5

  • Vita — the milk blend, roasted to bring out “strong caramel notes, especially when combined with milk products,” and pitched as also working in a pour-over, French press or drip.
  • Dolce — the straight-espresso blend, built for “the most complex and balanced flavors possible in straight espresso or black coffee,” with a heavy red-gold crema and sweet floral and chocolate notes.
  • Decaf — a 100% Swiss Water decaffeinated Ethiopian Sidamo, described as smooth, caramel-toned and without acidity.

To verify — single origins, catalogue size and ratings

A third-party roaster-directory profile lists Espresso Vivace with 8 coffees in its catalogue, an average 4.5 out of 5 in that site’s own expert reviews, and single-origin offerings named Ecuador Zamora, Ecuador Loja and Brazil Mogiano.6 None of this is confirmed by Vivace’s own site or any second independent source, the directory gives no farm, altitude, variety or processing detail, and its 4.5 figure is a consumer-review score — not an SCA cupping score. Treat the whole line as unverified.

No competition results, published cupping scores or auction purchases link Espresso Vivace to green-coffee auctions, Cup of Excellence or Best of Panama in the sources behind this note. That is an absence of evidence rather than proof of absence, but the company’s public reputation rests on roast style and technique, not on a scoreboard.

The cafés

Vivace started as a cart at 5th and Union in downtown Seattle in 1988, then ran a street stand by the Broadway Market QFC in Capitol Hill and a roastery café on South Broadway.2 Two sites operate now:34

CaféAddressNeighbourhoodHours
Brix (flagship)532 Broadway Ave East, Seattle WA 98102Capitol Hill6am–7pm daily
Alley 24227 Yale Ave N, Seattle WA 98109South Lake Union6am–4pm weekdays, 7am–5pm weekends

In May 2023 the company permanently closed its separate bar on Broadway in Capitol Hill. The stated reasons were that it sat close enough to the Brix flagship to compete with it for the same customers, and staffing difficulties after the COVID-19 pandemic.2

Why it matters

Vivace’s influence runs through its founder. David Schomer is credited with developing and popularising latte art in the United States — the heart was established as a Vivace signature by 1989, the rosetta was his in 1992 — and he retrofitted PID controllers to espresso machines so the brew water stopped drifting between shots, a fix that is now standard equipment across the trade.2 Both came out of the same small café.

The company also published: Schomer’s Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques (updated 2004, third revision 2013) and two DVD courses, Caffè Latte Art and Techniques of the Barista, all sold under the Vivace name.1 For a decade these were, in practice, the American barista curriculum.

Trade coverage has consistently framed Vivace as small but pivotal: Daily Coffee News marked its 30th anniversary in 2018 and described it as a “compact, longstanding and influential Seattle coffee company,” while Sprudge has noted that the company has served espresso “unabashedly in the Italian style” since the cart opened in 1988.78

To verify — other companies called "Vivace"

“Vivace” is a common espresso brand name and at least three unrelated businesses and products use it. Research for this note surfaced Lavazza Firma Espresso Vivace, an office capsule blend,9 Pellini No. 82 Vivace, an Italian 60/40 arabica-robusta blend,10 and Vivace Espresso, a roaster in Christchurch, New Zealand.11 None of these product pages was fetched directly for this note, and none of them appears to have any connection to the Seattle company — but no source explicitly states the separation either. Do not merge them into this note.

Footnotes

  1. Espresso Vivace — Our Story (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the name’s meaning, the 1988 partnership, Northern Italian roasting since 1992, the “caramel coffee” line, and the book and DVD list ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. Wikipedia — Espresso Vivace — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the founders’ backgrounds, the 5th and Union cart, the Broadway Market and South Broadway sites, the May 2023 Broadway closure and its reasons, and the US latte art credit ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  3. Espresso Vivace — Brix (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the flagship address and hours ↩ ↩2

  4. Espresso Vivace — Alley 24 (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the South Lake Union address and hours ↩ ↩2

  5. Espresso Vivace — Blends (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the Vita, Dolce and decaf descriptions ↩ ↩2

  6. My Coffee Explorer — Espresso Vivace roaster profile — third-party directory; not independently confirmed ↩

  7. Daily Coffee News — On Espresso Vivace’s 30th Anniversary, David Schomer Talks Roast, Grind and Brew — not read directly (this page returned HTTP 403 in earlier research on this wiki); cited via the research report ↩

  8. Sprudge — Seattle: The Infinite Complexity Of Espresso Vivace — cited via the research report ↩

  9. Lavazza — Firma Espresso Vivace ↩

  10. Galaxus — Pellini No. 82 Vivace espresso beans ↩

  11. Vivace Espresso — Specialty Coffee Roasters Christchurch ↩

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