55 / 60
WWW.ROUSES.COM
53
ITALIAN DRINKS
How To Drink Coffee
Here is what you can expect from a cup of
Lavazza coffee.
The Lavazza Single Origin Santa Marta
ground coffee blend comes from one place:
Colombia. It is 100% Arabica, which refers
to the coffee plant of origin (in the same way
that Merlot or Syrah refers to a variety of
grape). It is a medium roast leaning toward
dark, full and nutty with chocolate notes.
Gran Aroma is a straight-down-the-middle
medium roast. This is a good coffee to start
with. Before you drown it in cream or kill
it with sugar, give it a go on its own. You’ll
notice a distinct absence of that bitterness
you find with the cheap stuff. This coffee
will surprise you. If your palate is up for it,
try to find the coffee’s citrus undertones.
Lavazza’s Gran Selezione is a dark roast. A
coffee’s color — light, medium or dark — is
determined by the length of time its beans were roasted. Lighter
roasts will hit you over the head with a coffee’s origin — you’ll
know immediately, for example, if you’re drinking coffee from East
Africa versus South America — whereas dark blends are all about
the coffee’s aroma and flavor: chocolate or woody or tobacco, and so
on. Gran Selezione has distinct dark chocolate notes, and is non-
GMO and Rainforest Alliance Certified, meaning the beans were
harvested in an ecologically and socially sustainable manner. Finally,
you can feel good about something in your life.
Perfetto is an espresso roast, which is dark and characterized by
obvious caramel notes. In taste and mouthfeel — that is, its
aftertaste and body — this is the most Italian of the lot. The easy
question to ask when choosing this roast versus another is: “Do I
like espresso?” If the answer is yes, you know what to do.
Like wine across vintages, there is no set and permanent flavor of
coffee. As the Earth changes over time, that which we pull from
the soil will reflect these changes. Any coffee company’s aims are a
consistency of roast and an artistry of blend. To that end, Lavazza,
with one foot planted in the 19th century and the other in the
21st, keeps its traditions alive at the Lavazza Training Center,
headquartered in Turin and with 50 branches around the world.
Part history course, part laboratory and part master class in roasting,
tasting and preparation, the Center teaches new employees the “old
ways” alongside the new, so that new traditions grounded in the
Lavazza legacy might take root and grow.
Style, culture, borders and mores are ever in motion, and yet we still
listen to
La bohème
, admire Cezanne and read Jules Verne.We walk
through the Met and admire the cat made by Giacometti. Picasso
is both gone and here forever. While all this was happening, and
123 years after Luigi Lavazza elevated coffee into art, we still buy
it, drink it, and commune with the land and hands that brought it
to our table.
You Are Probably Eating Biscotti Wrong
Do you dip your biscotti in your coffee? At home,
nobody will judge you, but in Sicily, you might get a
few glares. Every culture takes its cuisine and food
culture seriously. You eat nigiri with your hands, not
with chopsticks. You never fill a wine glass more than
halfway. There’s no reason you can’t eat a cheeseburger
with a fork and knife, but it feels wrong when you see it
at the next table.
Italian food culture dictates that biscotti, or cantuccini,
is dipped traditionally in Vin Santo, a Tuscan dessert
wine. The taste and texture of the two treats
complement one another. Biscotti is very hard on
the teeth, and is helped along by a sweet drop of the
stronger stuff. After dinner, once plates are cleared
away, coffee comes last, and alone.