In Gozo, last weekend, at an Italian ice-cream parlour opened by a Milanese, I squinted at the coffee list, which included “espresso with cream”. I suspected a mistake in translation. “Do you mean a macchiato?” I asked the owner, with whom I had already struck up a conversation that established him as an artisan with a love for the details of his trade.

“Macchiato or... just cream,” he said haltingly, his voice trailing away, with an apologetic shrug. A moment of deep silence then followed.

We could have been a medieval Dominican friar and an innkeeper pondering the Cathar heresy.

“Ah, coffee for the pagans,” I said. “Yes, yes,” he nodded, glad to have found someone who understood and forgave.

In medieval Europe, heresies and infidels abounded. Besides the Cathars, there were the Albigensians. In my inquisitorial zeal, I asked a second question.

“Your machine, it’s not one of those with buttons, is it?” The automated ones that leave the barista hardly any discretion or room for experience to leave its mark and give the coffee a distinct character.

He hesitated but then confessed. Yes, it had buttons.

“But over here, it works out better this way.” Showing me his heart, he added, “The season has just begun and I feel so tired already.”

I’m not sure if the second comment was a reference to the heavy yoke of sin but I think I know what he meant by an automated machine working out better ‘here’.

‘Here’ is not just Gozo. It is the modern world of movement, of streams of tourists flowing in and out of a place, wanting to savour the texture and character of the place without wandering too far from what is familiar. Hence, the comforting familiarity of hotel chains, news channels (in several major languages but all covering more or less the same news items), and even food, with its fusions and toning down of herbs and spices.

The high priests of the one true faith of real coffee are expected to keep their zeal to themselves

The same has happened to espresso coffee ever since its global popularity took off. Two factors have played their part.

First, on the production side, there was the need to eliminate the human factor as much as possible: eliminate as much as possible of the skill needed to make the coffee, so that anyone could make it, no matter how little practice they got.

Packing coffee in pods, for example, eliminates the need to grind the coffee just before using it, a process that requires some judgement. It does away with the skill of tamping down the coffee with just the right amount of pressure. The risk of under- or overdrawing the coffee – resulting in coffee that’s too murky or too thin – is erased as well.

But it also means standardisation. The distinctive mixes of beans and roasts, of texture, aroma and density, which in Italy can be specific to a single bar, is lost.

Strong idiosyncratic character in a coffee, however, isn’t pleasing to everyone. If you’re living in Italy, you can just have your coffee at the next bar, where you can become a devotee and an habitué with a barista who prepares your caffé within a minute of seeing you at the counter.

As a tourist, however, you don’t have the time to find your own shrine. And so, the second factor, which has to do with consumption, kicks in. Automated espresso-makers might have less character but they make up for that by being less offensive and objectionable to a wider spectrum of people.

Even with coffee connoisseurs, blind tastings have seen Nespresso score, on average, better than an artisanal coffee.

In a tasting of five coffees, there is always one or two that score more brilliantly – but not consistently. The high score usually also comes with a low mark that drags the average down.

Whereas Nespresso scores consistently and posts a higher average. Having less character makes it less objectionable.

While the coffee is standardised, the scope for additional ingredients has widened considerably – mint, cinnamon, caramel, low-fat, cream, etc. Both a nod to pluralism and a finger to the purists, for whom all this is, well, pagan.

In one way, today’s coffee scene captures in miniature the spirit of our times. We permit à la carte diversity but also expect it to be bland. Diversity on the surface but with, deep down, liberal tolerance for the polytheism of taste.

The purists, the high priests of the one true faith of real coffee, are expected to keep their zeal to themselves. Not to do so is to offend, even if in a trivial way, against the relativist moral charter of our times.

However, there is something about coffee drinking that has, throughout its modern history (that is, since the early 17th century) made it a touchstone of debates about morals.

When the early coffee houses began to spread in popularity in Italy, an appeal was made to Pope Clement VIII to forbid the drink – the moralisers’ worry was that so many men congregating together, with pleasure, for long hours, could have no good result.

The pope, however, was fond of the drink himself, and quipped that it would be a pity to give the exclusivity of so delicious a drink to the infidel. (Europe had got to know coffee through Ottoman Muslim traders, but the Muslim jurists themselves had had to decide whether coffee was to be considered a morally licit drink – for exactly the same worry.)

But the worries were driven only by the clergy. In 1674, a women’s petition was made in London protesting at the absence of men from the home, even during times of domestic crisis, due to their presence in the coffee house.

And, given the role of coffee houses in spreading democratic ideas and arguments in France (different factions had their favourite dens), by the beginning of the 19th century, the Parisian police had a special network of spies who were dedicated to coffee houses.

Coffee brought people to talk and debate and spread new ideas of how they could organise themselves.

Over time, when the tables spilled over into the streets, the attitude changed. Now people could just sit and sip coffee silently, watching the world as a spectacle. But that semi-detachment was a moral attitude too.

It persists today. Its upside is that it eases the mixing and movement of peoples of diverse backgrounds. Its downside is that it also facilitates the illusion that we can get by in a bubble of privacy.

Most ambiguously of all, it affords us the fleeting pleasure of having, with our coffee, our cake and eating it.

ranierfsadni@europe.com

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