Little trivia about the history of coffee

Coffee always provides us with so many cues, ideas and stories, and so here is a collection of tales, rumors, "hearsay," true and false stories that over the centuries have helped create the coffee myth:

Those who made coffee known in the West were the Ottoman Turks, who drank it continuously throughout the day to the point of substituting it for wine because it was considered a convivial drink. In fact, coffee was also referred to as the "Wine of Arabia" or "Wine of Islam."

In 1683, the first Viennese coffeehouse was opened. Legend says that in that year when the Turks were forced to abandon the siege of Vienna, they left behind several sacks of coffee in their escape. From these sacks grew the Austrians' love for this product. Not surprisingly, the preparation of Viennese-style coffee uses a method very similar to Turkish coffee: it differs only because it is filtered.

In the Enlightenment movement, coffee found wide consideration. All the great Enlightenmentists were strong coffee drinkers, in order to be alert and prepared for debate. Voltaire was the most avid: it seems he drank about thirty cups a day.

Coffee was named after the first Italian periodical, which was founded by a distinguished group of Enlightenmentists from Lombardy, such as the brothers Pietro and Alessandro Verri, Cesare Beccaria and other members of the "Accademia dei Pugni." The pages of "Il Caffè" covered a variety of topics: from the sciences to the arts and social life.

The "Caffè Greco" was not a particular type of café, but was one of the hubs of artistic Rome in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Every out-of-town artist would come all the way there to seek his or her consecration.

At the time of the French Revolution, the Cafes were meeting places where people mostly talked about politics, and where revolutionaries developed projects and proposals. French Cafes were called "the spoken press of the Revolution," and each venue distinguished a political tendency. A man's ideas were, in fact, judged according to the Café he frequented.

Coffee found a place of honor in Islamic culture, since alcohol and any substance that intoxicated were (and still are) banned in Arab countries. Coffee came to be associated with a state of mental lucidity, to the point that its consumption was even disproportionate and without any contraindications. In fact, the first public places where coffee was consumed sprang up here. In the early sixteenth century, however, the governor of Mecca, in the belief that coffee "led the people to rebellion," attempted to prevent its consumption. The population reacted so energetically that the ban was immediately lifted.

In Naples there is a very curious custom: that of "suspended coffee": those who are less well-off can find a free coffee at the bar paid for by another person, who leaves it precisely suspended for those who want to go and drink it.

King Gustav III of Sweden sentenced two swindlers to death. The sentence was to be imposed by "administering coffee." Since they did not die, the sentence was repeated a second, a third, a fourth time. The two, chronicles of the time recount, lived to be 83 years old.

When it first appeared in Italy, coffee found quite a few opponents. The Church especially fought the custom of going to the bar, "a place of perdition." And attempts were made to ban it. But the then Pontiff, Clement VII wanted to try the "devil's drink" before condemning it. He was so seduced by it that he immediately imparted a blessing, christening it the "Christian beverage. "

In the beginning and for many centuries there was a widespread belief that coffee was only an exciting and invigorating food; Bedouins even thought it fought thirst, so much so that by crushing and kneading coffee berries with fat, they obtained breads to be consumed during desert travels and before battles.

In the past, in Turkey, a notoriously un-feminist country, if the man forbade his wife to drink coffee, she could ask for separation for "just cause"; however, the problem did not arise, because it was men who encouraged women's consumption of coffee, in the belief that it favored them during childbirth.

It has been said that the way coffee is consumed can be an indicator of a person's behavior: moderate consumption, often at specific times, generally characterizes an individual who tries to rationally divide up the day's activities and commitments, while excessive, hurried consumption, often a substitute for meals, is associated with more hectic and less cadenced life behaviors.

It can be said that while coffee has a practically insignificant food value in terms of its energy and nutritional intake, it also promotes some important metabolic and digestive activities, at the same time helping to limit an uncontrolled introduction of food and calories.

It is said that coffee should be drunk "imprecando," that is, boiling.

In one of his stories, the great Peppino De Filippo describes the use of the "abbrustulaturo" and the atmosphere that was created around it. De Filippo narrates that less well-off families used to toast coffee on their own, since buying it raw was cheaper. In many of the streets and alleys of Naples, during the roasting process, a delicious, penetrating, irresistible aroma of coffee emanated from the balconies. The "abbrustulaturo" was a cylinder 30 to 60 centimeters long, resting, by means of a pin placed at one end, on a metal box, at the base of which there was a grill to light the embers. Inside the cylinder were to be inserted the raw coffee beans and, while continuing to turn the crank placed at the other end of the cylinder, they were turned over and over again until they turned the color of a "monk's mantle."

If Europe is the largest consumer of coffee, Italy is not the one that takes the lion's share. We come in 12th place and if we widen the circle, we occupy 16th place in the world. But ask an Italian where he or she drinks the best coffee, indeed the best espresso, and you already know the answer. In Italy, coffee has been variously referred to as a "national drink," "part of the culture of the Italian," a "democratic product" because it is within everyone's reach. According to statistical surveys, in Italy the highest consumption occurs in the morning and after the midday meal, the lowest after dinner. Women and men drink almost the same number of coffees 2 or 3 cups on average every day, while young people get closer to this habit as they grow older. Conversely, the elderly increasingly tend to control the number of coffees they drink in the day.