STiR coffee and tea magazine

38 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 1, 2018 (February / March) coffee bean sorters. He talked with hundreds of coffee roasters across Italy, he says, "and each roasting company told me 'this is the best coffee.' That is 800 'best' cof- fees so I started to think. I need to understand what is the best coffee and why is it the best coffee." That research connected him with Vincenzo Sandalj. "And when I met him he gave a sample. It was not a blend," Lelli recalls. "It was completely different from all the coffee I drank before. To me, all I knew about coffee was cancelled. So, I started again to study." Another person in search of coffee enlightenment was Alessandro Galtieri, a caf- eteria owner in Bologna. "[Galtieri] wanted to know a lot more about coffee," remembers Cristina Caroli, who at that time was a cafeteria customer. She later married Galtieri and together they opened Aroma Caffé. Theresa Sandalj, center, is pictured with the Sandalj Trading Company team Leonardo Lelli, right, participates in a cupping session in 2015 in Nicaragua think we're being absolutely blasphemous with this talk of specialty vs. bad coffee." "What stifles qualitative evolution in Italy is surely price," she says. "One espresso was traditionally related to the price of a newspaper. Most Italians will not be happy to pay more than €1.00 for either. The expensive cafés go higher, tourist locations go higher, but the typi- cal bar will not." More honor, more value Theresa Sandalj likes to think of special- ty coffee as her father described it when he was a founding member of the then- Specialty Coffee Association of Europe. "Strive for quality, sustainability, and cul- ture," she says. "Care for the product you are selling, the people who are involved in it, and the consumers who will drink it." Leonardo Lelli agrees, and says he talks about coffee whenever he can - where it's grown, how it's grown, how it's washed, and how to best roast the beans. "I talk with people on airplanes," he says. "I tell them coffee was born in Ethiopia, that there is coffee in India. They did not know." A recent conversation at his roastery starts with an espresso and, not surpris- ingly, his description of the beans and the source of origin. "We need to give the cup of coffee more honor, more value," Lelli says. Lelli's efforts to advance quality cof- fee in Italy began more than 20 years ago when he worked in quality control for a company producing electronic color Galtieri needed a roaster so he turned to Torrefazione Caffé Lelli. Aroma then took the rare step of of- fering its customers a coffee menu from which to choose their day's espresso. People were confused at first and then became "absolutely curious" about the idea of ordering a specific coffee. In time, they began ordering something different each day. They also had to slow down, stop running. "They had to wait for us to grind," Caroli recalls. "People came in to see this strange ritual." Customers brought friends to the coffee bar to show what they had dis- covered. Newcomers would repeat the education process – reading the menu, asking questions, selecting and discover- ing new tastes. Photo courtesy Torrefazione Caffé Lelli Photo courtesy Sandalj Trading Company

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