On Collecting Coffee Cups
Evolution of coffee drinking: From my personal experience Coffee is a liquid that smells like fresh ground heaven. However, I did not always think this was the case. When I was young, coffee was too bitter and pungent for my palette. Throughout high school and college, every attempt to get accustomed to the dark brown elixir ended with a near gagging experience, mouth flung open trying to scrape every molecule from my tongue. Then, in 1998, a summer abroad trip to Cortona, Italy changed everything. Nearly every morning, instead of nibbling on the Melba toast or other continental breakfast offerings provided at my accommodations, I would make my way to the city square to a small cafe. There, I would get a pastry and a caffè latte. The owner, a man in his thirties, taught me some Italian, and I him some English. Our conversations were mostly about food, ingredients, and how to say this word or that. But the ambiance of the open air cafe on the corner of Piazza Signorelli truly made the experience what it was. In my mind, the coffee, the cafe, the pastries, the piazza were inextricably linked. Thus, the coffee was all the better and the taste far less bitter. Caffè lattes are a good foray into coffee drinking because they are mostly milk (hence the name). In the preparation, a caffè latte is made when hot milk is poured over espresso and served in a tall glass. The pouring, creates
a subtle mixing of the two liquids that do not necessarily become completely blended in the process. Made in front of me in the open air cafe, the first step towards consumption was to meditate on the swirling cosmos of black and white. When espresso is poured over milk (milk being the primary ingredient) the drink is called a macchiato—meaning stained or spotted. In either case between a caffè latte or a macchiato, the bitterness of the espresso is cut by the thick hot frothy milk. Returning to the United States from Italy, I began to explore options for capturing the essence of the caffè lattes enjoyed in Cortona. Disappointment quickly set in because American coffee was far more bitter tasting no matter how much milk was added to it. Also, any coffee to be found at the time was thin and lacking the sufficient amount of coffee grounds necessary for creating a rich flavor. And, even when a good tasting brew could be found, there simply was, alas, no comparison to the ambiance of gazing out over the piazza. Purveyors of coffee in the United States could not hold a candle to the memory of Italian coffee in my mind’s eye. One year later, upon moving from LaGrange, Georgia to Atlanta, I discovered Starbucks. Their coffee was far better than other places I had tried—and it should be noted that independent coffee shops were not really a thing yet. The best thing Starbucks had going for it at the time was that the company was in the midst of its third place marketing concept.
