Friday Musings: All In Good Time

A week or so ago, I was driving up to work at Recklesstown Farm Distillery in Columbus when I happened to see one of those large swaying banner flags at the edge of a gas station that read, “Today’s Coffee Flavor: Espresso!” Well now. Am I the only one who finds the idea of a gas station espresso to be a bit of an oxymoron? I doubt that I am, but I can’t say that with absolute certainty. What I can say, however, is that Andrea and Ernesto Illy, father and son chairmen respectively of Illycaffé, would most definitely agree with me. Illycaffé, or just Illy, was founded in Italy in 1933 and remains a family controlled business that specializes in espresso and markets to 140 countries worldwide. Their annual revenue is over 600 million euros, and in 1999, they established the University of Coffee, Unicaffe, in Naples, an institution dedicated to coffee education and research. According to Ernesto Illy, “the quintessential expression of coffee is espresso.” Andrea takes that concept one step further by stating that “espresso is a miracle of chemistry in a cup” and “coffee is the official beverage of culture.” If we consider our favorite morning drink in these terms, I think that most of us would see the possibility of finding either a miracle or culture at a mini mart along Route 206 to be a highly unlikely one. But what if we happen to have an overwhelming desire for an espresso just as we read the words on that banner flag? Will any cup that we can get our hands on suffice at that point? I wonder.
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