We have a lot from India, Brazil,
and from the Sidamo region of Ethiopia,
which is one of the places
where Arabica coffee originated.
Vinco is also a blender,
combining different varieties of coffee
to please the tastes of his customers.
The Arabicas procure a mild, aromatic flavour,
while Robusta adds strength to the blend.
In Italy, blending is an essential part of the business,
which Vinco has made a selling point.
After its long journey the coffee is finally roasted.
The roasting machines are equipped
with the latest cutting-edge technology.
Computerised production lines allow
for different roasting times,
depending on the type of bean.
It¡¯s the roasting that brings out
the delicious coffee aromas
from the tasteless and odourless green bean.
There have also been extraordinary innovations
in the packaging of coffee.
Traditional packets are prepared
for old-fashioned home consumption,
as well as the latest trend: disposable capsules.
These single doses have been a real market breakthrough.
And coffee producers invest enormous amounts in advertising.
The task of attracting customers worldwide
has fallen to Hollwood stars and fashion photographers.
Each brand has its own market legacy,
and invests a lot of money to sell
its own ¡°coffee experience¡± to the public.
The headquarters of Italy¡¯s
largest coffee company is in Turin.
Since it was founded 100 years ago,
it has stamped its distinctive mark
on the world of advertising.
One of its campaigns educates consumers
about the roots of coffee.
With our project ¡°Coffee Roots¡±,
we wanted to make a journey
in space and time through all the countries
which have played their part
in the history and evolution of coffee.
It¡¯s a journey which began in Ethiopia,
in Africa, and then passed through
the history and development of the Arab world,
from Yemen to Turkey, via Syria, Lebanon,
Jordan, Tunisia and Egypt.
Vittorio Castellani calls himself,
quite appropriately, a ¡°gastro-nomad¡±.
He set off in search of the origins of coffee,
discovering on his way some little-known facts.
In the beginning, coffee wasn¡¯t a drink
but a foodstuff, which shepherds would eat,
especially while moving livestock
from one grazing ground to another.
They used a pestle and mortar to crush
non-roasted green coffee beans with mutton fat.
Coffee only became a drink later on,
when it was traded and brought from Ethiopia to Yemen.
The Arabs added spices to this stimulating new brew.
It was the Turks who dissociated coffee
from its added spices,
appreciating the intrinsic taste of the drink itself.
The Turks played a fundamental role
in turning coffee into the drink that we all know today.
Richard Hunersdorff, book antiquarian,
is particularly well-known
for his collection of works on coffee,
some of them over five hundred years old.
No mention exists of coffee
from the Middle East before
the first great explorations of merchants
and scientists to the area.
The very first book,
the first scientific account of coffee
was written by an Italian called Alpini.
And that was printed in Venice in 1591.
He describes the fruit, the bean,
the roasting, and the effects of the coffee drink,
it's actually amazing. Very very graphically.
And he supplies what is the first picture
of a coffee tree in a western book.
Hunersdorff has compiled the world¡¯s
first bibliography on coffee.
One of the 20,000 titles listed tells
an involved tale of early industrial espionage.
The Yemenis were very difficult people
and they were used to doing business with the Turks
and they didn¡¯t like being approached by other foreigners
because they were suspicious of them.
They didn't want Europeans taking their commodity.
They wanted to sell coffee beans;
they didn't want Europeans to take their coffee plants.
But they didn't succeed.
So the French were the ones who were successful
in stealing coffee plants in the Yemen
and concealing them and bringing them back
on their ships and taking them somewhere else where
the climate was right for it.
Coffee plants weren¡¯t the only thing
the Europeans stole from the Middle East.
They also appropriated the whole coffee-drinking culture.
It was in Constantinople, today¡¯s Istanbul,
that the coffeehouse culture is thought to have originated.
Serif Basaran calls himself a ¡°coffee educator¡±.
As an expert in the coffee history of Turkey,
he knows better than anyone
what this drink means to the Turks.
He¡¯s always on the lookout for unusual brewing devices
and all manner of traditional methods of making coffee.
This madrassa was founded 300 years ago.
At the time, young men came here to be instructed
in mathematics and politics by men of religion.
The custom was that while they were here
they¡¯d smoke water pipes and drink lots of Turkish coffee.
But this was soon prohibited under the Ottoman regime.
The people who came to such places discussed politics a lot,
and they were often very critical of those in power.
This was why Sultan Murad IV ended up
forbidding his people to drink coffee.
But the ban never actually made the Turks stop drinking coffee.
And their coffee culture gradually spread to the West.
The first coffeehouses in Northern Europe opened in London.
Markman Ellis is professor of 18th-century studies
at Queen Mary¡¯s College, University of London.
He reminds us that our great love of coffee today
is a direct result of developments in the 17th century.
The high street in Britain is full of
coffee houses of different brands and kinds.
There were none in the early 17th century.
Shakespeare never drank coffee, never heard of coffee.
And now they are ubiquitous.
Coffee houses were famous for being open to everybody.
That was the point.
Was that you didn¡¯t need to worry about
being a great man or a grand man
Anyone was allowed to go into the coffee house.
And that principle of openness in equality
was really important to the kinds
of discussion that they had there.
People obviously took to the drink
but they also took to the idea
of drinking coffee together and talking.
Still, the coffee being served then
was quite different from what we¡¯re familiar with today.
I think coffee in the 18th century
was a pretty nasty brew.
Most coffee houses were more
interested in ease and cheapness.
So what they tended to do,
was to have a big cauldron of coffee,
and they¡¯d throw some coffee in the morning
and add some water and keep it boiling all day.
And if the level got a bit low,
chuck a bit more coffee in
so you can imagine the kind of burnt,
over extracted, really nasty flavours that would result.
Coffeehouses soon spread around Europe,
but adopted different styles depending on the country.
In France, Germany, Austria and Italy,
the establishments serving coffee
became more and more elegant.
Le Procope in Paris or Caffe Florian in Venice
were luxurious and expensive.
More stimulating than beer or wine,
coffee would inspire very heated debates.
I think the bourgeoisie during the Enlightenment
turned to drinking coffee because
it stood in opposition to alcohol.
Don¡¯t forget that alcoholic drinks were the norm.
People drank hardly anything else
in Europe throughout the Middle Ages.
So during the Enlightenment people drank coffee
because they felt more aware,
more intellectually active.
Coffee, it seemed,
had a more positive effect on the mind and body.
Coffee trading constantly increased in Europe.
Trieste¡¯s free port became the hub
of this commerce in green coffee beans.
Trieste has a long history linked to coffee.
It began in the 18th century
when the traffic towards central Europe
was relocated to this new imperial town,
built by the Austrians.
It was also in the 18th century
that the first coffee stalls appeared in Trieste.