Amaro, a word literally meaning bitter in Italian, is also the name of a digestif that prominently features that flavour. Recently at a friend’s house after some dinner, two bottles of Amaro were produced. One, a kind of supermarket-grade generic brand, the second a more obscure, local, artisan effort. The difference was stark. The first produced a kind of mishmash of flavour accompanied by a dull, pervasive bitterness. The second had much more clarity of flavour, was quite floral, vibrant, and at the very end, as the liquid left my mouth a single note, like a line across my tongue of bitterness emerged. It didn’t swamp my tongue, instead it felt deliberate and well-defined.
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Some lighter blog fair this time. As the annual gift giving orgy is a mere [insert number] days away, there’s an increased level of discourse about what to buy. I’ve seen a lot of “what espresso machine should I buy for under €100?”, “anywhere sell that civet coffee?” etc. An awful lot of money will be poorly spent on shit (sometimes literally) coffee gifts this Christmas. So I thought I’d put together ten items, covering a variety of price points, of things that I would be happy to give or receive.
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Oh dear. I was involved in a bit of a Twitter kerfuffle over the last week. I think the Twitter medium compounded the agro, the limitations of Twitter really stifle any serious discussion or elaboration of points. Everything ends up being a soundbite. A little bit of hastiness on my part didn’t help either, in fairness. I think, and hope this post might add some clarity to the points I was trying to make.
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About a year ago I went to London, primarily to attend a Square Mile “Taste of …” event, but I also used it to do a tour of some of the recommended coffee shops. I left impressed and jealous in equal measure. As the interim year passed, my envy increased with the reports, the pictures, the videos, the newspaper clippings. The London map, it seemed, was becoming increasingly speckled with exciting, new, quality-driven cafes. This year, my superficial reason at least was to attend an Ultimate Bartista Fighter event, a latte art throwdown with costumes, again at the Square Mile roastery.
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