The Perfect Cup of Coffee

Dante Cagliari has tried south Indian filter coffee. The grimace on his face indicates he does n’t particularly like it. For the seventy-six year old roast-master from Modena, Italy, coffee is a shot of espresso—deep, intense and very addictive, “Every characteristic of the bean comes out in an espresso,” he says.

Cagliari, who has a century-old family heritage of coffee behind him, is in Bengaluru to offer that knowledge to the Seven Beans Coffee Company, head-quartered in the Garden City.

“I dedicate a lot of time to coffee, have written a book about it, made television presentations about it, taught a course on it at the University of Bologna,” he says, adding that he has also invented a machine for which sorts the unroasted, green coffee beans to separate the good from the bad. “I am considered something of an expert in Italy and our company produces only quality coffee—it is the same system we passed to our partners here,” he says.

Indian coffee beans may be among the best in the world now, after a decade of development and advances in the way beans are grown and processed here, but according to him, it is the Italian roasting technique that brings out its flavour to the fullest. Time is of essence for instance, and the ideal roasting time for Cagliari is 18 minutes.

“There are machines that roast in 4 minutes but this way you burn coffee outside, leaving the inside unroasted,” he says, adding that even though the machines used—both at Modena and at the Seven Beans manufacturing unit at Chikmagalur—is modern, “we use the most traditional ways of roasting it”.

Perfect Italian coffee is almost always a blend of coffees imported from different countries, “We import different origins to make a cup of complete harmony,” says Cagliari. India does not need to import coffee, however, to make a perfect cup. “You do not have to fill it with other origins of coffee as you already have a very good product available here,” he says.

Indian coffee often finds its way to Italian brew. According to the Coffee Board website that details the country-wise export of coffee between 1 January and 21 September , Italy is the world’s largest importer of Indian coffee.

“The demand for it is often so high that we don’t find it easily in Italy,” he says.

Coffee awareness has been going up considerably in India. More people are opening their mind to what he calls ‘modern coffee’—espresso and americano, for instance—where the flavours come from the brew itself and not the additions to it. “I think that even tea-drinking nations like India and China are opening up to coffee,” he says.

And what about the health hazards associated with its overconsumption? Cagliari dismisses it. “People think that coffee is not good for health,” he says. “In reality that depends on the way you roast and treat it,” he says, admitting that he himself partakes of around 14 shots a day, “I am 76 years old and I am in full form, no?” He grins. “I hope to do this for 50 more years.”