Coffee Culture in Italy

In a bustling café in Rimini men stand at the counter and knock back tiny cups of powerful caffeine – ristretto is ‘very short black coffee’ – shuddering as they swallow, almost as if it is a chore – so why do they do it? It costs more to sit down.

I ask for a latte and receive a glass of milk. If you ask for a caffe é latte, you also get a small jug of coffee (a shot of double strength coffee – not espresso) which you add to your milk and watch the colours and flavours mingle. These are generally only drunk at breakfast and made in the privacy of your own home (and certainly without froth).

They are akin to the French café au lait, and what Americans call a latte would be considered an abomination on the continent. US lattes were first made in Berkeley in America and are basically a cappuccino with extra milk added. What they call a latte; New Zealander’s call a flat white. This is all getting confusing.

But don’t worry, because you can only drink milky coffee in the mornings unless you are uncouth or a tourist – which seems to amount to the same thing. Otherwise you have an espresso, or an espresso doppio (a double espresso) or a caffe Americano which is an espresso served with a jug of hot water so you can make your own – they can’t bring themselves to adulterate the coffee in this way. New Zealanders call that a long black.

Italians are also known to drink moccaccino (which is a third of espresso with two thirds of steamed milk mixed with chocolate), caffe macchiato (espresso ‘stained/marked’ with a dash of milk) or latte macchiato (vice-versa; i.e. milk ‘stained’ with a dash of espresso). They do not drink triple Venti nonfat decafe latte white chocolate blended mocha frappucino whip. Without froth.

They do get a bit weird though with the old espresso confuso, which is a sort of coffee desert – espresso mixed with a chocolate gelato. Very confuso indeed. And the freddoccino is a cold (freddo) cappuccino. I’m not sure if they make these specially or just leave them lying around until they get cold. My mum’s good at that. I bet they don’t then put them in the microwave and forget about them though.

My very favourite is the caffe corretto, which is a shot of espresso, 'corrected' with a shot of grappa. Wow! That's enough to blow your socks off. We were walking in the snow in Dolomites for four hours and stumbled back off the mountain to a cutesy cafe by a lake when we discovered these. I could have done the walk all over again. Well, maybe not, but for about ten minutes I thought I could. Mind you, I thought I could leap tall buildings in a single bound. I was wrong.