lmao, they don't stand a chance. We're talking about a country where the police has a special olive oil tasting department to test if local producers aren't secretly mixing their extra virgin oil with chemically treated oil from last year. Nobody food snobs like the Italians (and I love them for it).

> We're talking about a country where the police has a special olive oil tasting department

The US government operates several special tasting departments.

Probably not anymore

In the US, the best example is in California. To get the California Olive Oil Council stamp of extra virgin quality, you must have your oil tasted by the government body. I'm one of such tasters :)

ok, then I'll link this video again to make sure you don't miss it because I bet it's extra entertaining for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkO1dwx2_KA&t=16m00s

This is why I mostly buy Californian olive oil now. I like the legit italian or spanish kind more, but it's faked so often in the grocery store that it isn't even worth attempting to decide if it's real. Sometimes the fakes tell you it's cut with olives from africa, and sometimes they don't. The US importers are held to no standards whatsoever. At least when I buy california olive oil, it's 95% of the way there and guaranteed to be real.

Do the US tasting departments disqualify olive oil for daring to be (gasp!) Spanish in origin though?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkO1dwx2_KA&t=16m00s

Seems to me as they are Italian oil testers, identifying non-Italian oil as a problem makes sense, because from their perspective it doesn't meet the standards they are paid to uphold.

As an American, I was never a coffee snob but going to Italy changed that. My god they have it completely mastered.

Italian cuisine seems to have a deeper understanding of bitter flavors than other common Western cuisines. They understand bitter vegetables like chicory and agretti, they understand bitterness in chocolate, and the coffee I had there always had the faintest hint of bitterness that enhanced rather than detracted from the flavor.

It probably also helps that they are downing a demitasse in a minute or two instead of a giant venti size beast that lasts for an hour.

Bitterness seems to be common in Mediterranean cuisine in general.

It's on a different level.

Wait until you realise that coffee can also not be toasted dark to death. Then you get to explore the other tastes of coffee too!

What do you do now?

I have a Flair Espresso machine and get beans from a nearby roaster. I dunno. It seems decent. I don’t consider myself a snob, but I put some effort in.

Maybe Italians would be able to tase the defects that I add. But, they are the people who popularized Moka pots so they can’t really be so perfect.

What’s wrong with the Moka pot? I travel a lot so I always bring mine with me. I find using the right coffee and slowly heating the water produces pretty good coffee.

You seem to be taking a reasonable approach, I have a Gaggia bean to cup machine and try lots of different beans and always try to get seasonal.

I pretty much drink solely espresso, but will sometimes have cappuccino for breakfast (which is the only time of day that Italy accepts!)

Ultimately, it’s about what you like. It doesn’t really matter what Italy thinks. But as with anything, getting good ingredients and preparing them well makes a difference.

I wouldn’t consider myself a ‘coffee snob’, more a coffee enthusiast :D. Good coffee from ethical sources is just better. People talk of coffee jitters. I don’t get any. And the variety of flavours is awesome.

btw, anyone in the UK: I really like Coffee Bean Shop [1]. It’s a small family owned coffee roaster, with a good variety of flavours. And on every delivery there’s a hand written note from the packer. Usually talking about the weather, but can be a variety of things. It’s very cute in our internet age and genuinely brings a smile to my face every time I open the package. The coffees are excellent too.

[1] https://coffeebeanshop.co.uk/