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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.

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