Enthusiasts, admirers, fanatics, supporters, employees, custodians of its secrets and flavors, Italian and Neapolitan supremacists of the most famous national drink in the world, coffee, hyper-celebrated in literature (Pietro Verri docet), cinema (from Pulp Fiction to Notorius to Divorzio all'italiana), music (from De André to Pino Daniele to Bob Dylan) and theater (from Goldoni to Eduardo De Filippo), keep your seat: the Italian coffee, tricolor national pride, is not the best in the world. The best ones are drunk in Australia, Japan, often even in the United States and neighboring France. There solemn rejection comes from two Italian journalists, Andrea Cuomo and Anna Muzio, than in a book World Coffee (Cairo Editore, I Libri del Golosario series, 320 pages, 18 euros), tell, as the subtitle states, "the history of consumption and evolution of a wonderful invention", debunking many clichés about a drink that made Giuseppe Verdi exclaim: "Coffee is the balm of the heart and the spirit" and to which Eduardo De Filippo attributed miraculous powers: "When I die, bring me coffee, and you will see that I will resurrect like Lazarus".
The fact is that, produced in over fifty tropical countries – there are 125 species aEven if the most widespread for their commercial value are only two: Coffea Arabica and Coffea Canephora or Robusta – consumed all over the world, without geographical, economic, social or religious distinctions coffee in Italy does not even reach consumption records. Indeed, statistics tell us that the countries that drink the most coffee are Finland, Norway and the Netherlands. AND Italy? It is only in eighteenth place, even if we supply the rest of the world with most of the machines for the production of espresso, the tradition of the cup and also the specialized vocabulary: everywhere we say espresso, cappuccino, ristretto, macchiato, latte and barista. Already, the word that designates someone who circles around the machine to prepare our coffee and that if in Italy it often designates a tired churning out cups with which to briefly talk about football and politics - Cuomo and Muzio point out - elsewhere it is associated with a guru of the grain, who knows and studies the raw material and becomes its true ambassador.
And here we are at the point. Italy is one of the countries where less is known what ends up inside the cup. The fault of the unique thought of the espresso, according to which the only way to taste coffee is to be punched in the stomach by those seven milliliters of liquid resulting from the extreme extraction of the coffee powder guaranteed by the combination of nine-atmosphere pressure and very high temperature. A sort of "medicine" that allows us to face the day and the office manager with greater determination and that pushes us to see coffee almost as if it were a medicine, even forgiving it overly bitter, burnt, toasted aromas. In this way we have lost sight of the importance of the raw material, the origin, the quality, the distinction between Arabica and Robusta. All factors that make coffee tasting a moment of enjoyment. Also because few know that coffee has twice the aromatic profiles of wine, and therefore it would be worth paying a little more attention to it when we drink it.
According to the authors of the book the Italians would be sick of “tazzismo”, that form of discrimination that most of us apply to those who do not drink espresso in the cup but prefer filter coffees in large cups, which are still seen by us with a mixture of contempt and pity and generically dismissed as “Americans ”. A manifestation of liquid sovereignty which even gourmets and gastronomically educated and curious people often fall into.
But certain "cultural" certainties collide with what is happening abroad. How many know, for example, that the fact that theAustralia has become in recent decades a land of coffee addicts, che consume coffee in all ways and at all hours and above all they give great importance to origin, type, roasting and extraction; information, of which Italian consumers are often surprisingly unaware”. Raise your hand who, when ordering a cup of coffee in a bar, has ever confronted the barista asking him only half of this information (differences between the beans of the different species, the styles and characteristics of the roasting, the correct method of conservation, the origins, the impact of the terroir) before bringing the cup to your mouth!
But the Mondo Caffè book is also much more: it provides data, botanical notions, explains the various methods of extraction and tasting, even those very far from our tradition, refutes the clichés according to which coffee is bad for your health, provides a guide to the best addresses where you can taste Italian coffees and specialty coffees, in Italy and in the rest of the world. And it also tells about the strange but profitable relationship between coffee and gastronomy demonstrating – thanks to around thirty recipes by as many great chefs working in Italy – from Heinz Beck to Niko Romito, from Andrea Berton to Eugenio Boer, from Pino Cuttaia to Davide Oldani, from Cristina Bowerman to Moreno Cedroni – that coffee is not only the ingredient of tiramisu but rather, thanks to its characteristics of acidity, bitterness and elegance it can be treated as a great spice capable of ennobling any dish, from appetizers to main courses. There are also some cocktails proposed by some of the best young Italian bartenders.
And then the book Mondo Caffè has a preface by the great writer and philosopher Luciano De Crescenzo, recently deceased; one of his latest petites, a small sugared cup to remember him with sweetness. And we can rely, to conclude on his words: “Coffee is not a simple drink, no sir, it is something more”. Maybe we underestimated him.
