Coffee Italiano: E02
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Time to read 4 min
This is my second sojourn into Italy for coffee, and I’m beginning to understand what it’s all about. This blog is about the tension between two the opposite ends of coffee culture. If it reads like an attack on Italian roast coffee, I can assure you it is not; I’m just a pretentious British barista describing my experiences.
The candid diary of a speciality barista drinking coffee in Italy.
2. Cappuccino in Cuneo
This coffee day started bad, and it was entirely my fault.
To head north from my French valley is a bit of a nightmare. The tunnel at Tende only opens at 8am and 6pm, so getting to Italy this way meant a 6am alarm. Wanting to start the day on a high, I decided to brew us something special for the trip - a Chorro Alto cafetiere!
I’m actually pretty rubbish pre 8am, so this did not go well at all. In my morning zombie state I forgot to fill the kettle for 2 so ran out of water half way through the pour. In the rush, with no time for a redo, I just topped it up with cold after 5 mins and chucked some honey in - this was a mistake.
Word of warning here, floral forest honey does not mix well with heavily processed coffees. My “start on a high” thermos was full of disgusting, sickly, slightly sicky, stimulation. WIth a glug and a grimace I headed to the van.
We bombed through the valley in the Citroen C15 and began winding our way up to Tende, only stopping for cash, as I was assured the boulangerie on the Italian side was worth the wait.
Shit, I need to drink some coffee. What will my companion think of me if I don’t offer him any? But what will he think if I do offer him this train-wreck of a brew?
He tried it. He tried to be polite. The rest went out the window.
Finally, we crossed the border and arrived at an approved pannetteria in Limone. Yes, in Italy they do pizza at 8am. The rest of my morning routine went out the window with the coffee, and I decided to embrace the sugar spike with a full-fat Coke and pizza for breakfast. Omg, everything from the bakery was amazing, I just love the Italian attitude to food… I don’t miss Greggs at all.
The building supplies we were looking for were easy to find, and the merchants agreed we could pick them up in the evening on the way back to the tunnel, so to kill some time we headed into Cuneo for a coffee.
Cuneo is beautiful; proper Northern European feeling with big architecture and geezers singing weird music with violins.
You always hear about the wealth divide between the north and the south here, opposite to the UK in that the money’s at the top, but here you can really see it - almost none of the cars have dents in for instance. Could this be a place with speciality coffee?
We sat down outside Cafe 44 in the pedestrianised centre.
Usually, I try to avoid cafes named after their street number; I don't like to encourage it. Anyway…
“Caio! Vorrei duo coffee cappuccini per favore!”
We waited anxiously. The people on the table next to us were drinking an Aperol spritz, it was 10.30am, even for me that’s early. The dread set in hard for me. I’m in a foreign country, trapped for the rest of the day, feeling weird after getting up early and eating pizza, and now I’m gonna put myself through another coffee italiano.
Wait, wow, are these for us? THEY HAVE LATTE ART!!! Ahaaa! Shut up everyone who’s ever told me that a cap shouldn’t have latte art… Here I am IN ITALY, and the cappuccinos have got beautiful tulips. I was so giddy after 3 weeks without microfoam.
Ok, so the coffee itself wasn’t my idea of delicious, but it’s Italy so I was already braced for the darkness. The espresso was from Antico Casolare, a local(ish) roaster a couple towns to the east, and to be fair to them, it was closer to dark roast than dark dark roast. Could I taste a bit of chocolate, maybe some hazelnut? I’m not sure, but I think my palette is getting conditioned to accept more bitterness out here.
Look, beautifully textured milk can hide a lot of sins, but this was a traditional Italian coffee I was able to drink without sugar. Bravo the barista, bravo the Rancilio machine that churned it out, bravo to the lady with the small dog and an Aperol spritz, bravo to the farmers!.. Actually, wait, there’s no mention of the farmers. Not in the cafe, not on the website, not on the bag… It’s like this coffee just magically appeared in Italy - It didn’t.
Perhaps the cafe owner knows where it’s from, I did find an old insta post advertising a Guatemala with a farm name on it, but there’s nothing from the roaster mentioning origin now. My guess is that this coffee, like a lot of the old-school Italian roast stuff, is effectively untraceable.
When roasters don’t publicise origin and provenance, it’s just harder to believe they prioritise the livelihoods of producing communities, the welfare of subsistence farmers in East Africa, or the wider sustainability issues involved in our trade.
Here's what their website has to say about their buying strategy: “The coffees are of superior quality (sourced from all over the world), carefully selected, and roasted using an ancient, artisanal method” - Sure mate… and I have a secret snowboarding supermodel girlfriend in Canada that none of my friends has ever met.
I shouldn’t have let it get to me. The cappuccino was lovely, never mind that the Italianism of coffee is an unnecessary distraction from the realities of this industry.
We mooched around the shops for a bit, then headed to pick up our supplies. Let me tell you, half a tonne of timber on the roof of a C15 is a pretty scary load on a mountain road!
Catch me next time for a tiramisu special!
Arriva and Derci pals x
Jasper Dumas
Well I'm pretty far down the coffee rabbit hole, so far that I can see the other side. The other side is the context around coffee, and the shaft of light is a future where I never need to make another Flat White.
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