Okay -- we don't sell coffee here at Purciful's Magical Toys --occasionally tea, and a few tea and coffee accessories. But we leave the selling of coffee to the big boys -- and they don't come any bigger than Illy. And you know I love a good story -- so here's one -- in respect of the passing of Ernesto Illy in Trieste, Italy on February 6, 2008. Once upon a time, there was an immigrant named Francesco Illy who settled and made his home in Trieste in the 1930s. Skip ahead to 1992. Wait wait. In the intervening years, Francesco Illy was pretty busy. He invented the modern espresso machine and all the engineering and chemistry that implies. He founded Illycaffe -- agreed by most to be the best espresso in the world. And he became an art lover. Somewhere along the way, he also had children, and he and his son, Dr. Ernesto Illy, created the most stringent standards for a single-product label in the world, and changed everything we know about coffee, including but not limited to- how it should be grown, harvested, stored, roasted, brewed, enjoyed, marketed, shipped and labeled. Back to 1992. *1990, actually. The Illy family called on artist Mateo Thun to redesign the espresso cup. This doesn't sound like such a miraculous thing -- a cup is a cup is a cup, right? No. An Illy cup is something very different -- especially different from those delicate and dainty little demitasse cups made of porcelain you could see through. Those cups are meant to accompany cucumber sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off.... So -- Different HOW exactly? First, the Illy-Thun cup is much thicker -- the walls, from the rim to the base are 3-5 times thicker than the average "demi-tasse or espresso cup. This is because in Illy World, the cup is preheated -- so the hot, fresh, shot of espresso isn't bruised by the coldness of the cup. It also means that your espresso will stay hot much longer, giving the whole cup a chance to remain full-flavored until you're done. Next, Thun redesigned the saucer -- the result was the "Vesuvius" or pedestal shape. This means the center of the saucer is raised so than any spills drain away from the base of the cup into a little gutter -- making it much less likely that tiny brown-black drops of magic elixir will find their way onto clean shirts and ties. It also means the little cup is elevated. Like a statue. A work of art. More on this in a moment. And then Thun redesigned the handle so that instead of a miniature loop where your finger could become awkwardly tangled causing spills and sudden drops to the floor -- instead of that -- you get a flat, round handle that can be grasped securely. All in all, the Mateo Thun Illy cup is a bit of engineering and art all by itself! But Illy had other, loftier aims for his new cup. While espresso bars and fine restaurants around the world serve Illycaffe in the new logo cup designed by Thun, the cup has also become the artists' canvas -- and each year since 1992, Illy has commissioned single and sets of these cups from a variety of international artists and designers, including Jeff Koons, Francis Ford Coppola, Rauschenberg, David Byrne, and Lucca Trazzi. Francesco, Ernesto, and Andrea Illy are not only great engineers, businessmen, and coffee purists, they are meliorists. They each believe(d) they could change the world -- and they did. They are. They changed the world with a taste and an aroma, and a feeling -- all wrapped up in an unbelievably heavy cup. I was in Dallas, Texas in 1992, and I stopped at a little coffee bar on Mockingbird Lane for a cup -- and there was the very first set of Illy Cups perched out of reach, and almost out of sight. They were wonderful! Each cup was different -- and so unusual -- nothing like any demitasse in my mother's little shelf collection. Nothing I'd ever seen or been served. I paid about $65 for the set that included an 8 ounce can of Illy's espresso grind coffee. The box was flimsy and the styrofoam that held the cups was cracked and crumbling from being handled, but the cups were perfect. And the little included booklet said there were other cup sets coming -- so I started watching for them. (This was in the years just prior to the internet, so there was no "online search" or eBay. It was all footwork and directory assistance.) In the years since, I've purchased cups and cup sets shipped to me by IllyUSA, Marshall Fields in Chicago, Zoxx in the Netherlands, a college student in Naples, and a coffee shop in Berlin. I missed sets during years of economic uncertainty. I've missed special cups created for museum openings and charity gatherings. I've forgotten about them for months and years at a time. But the best part of my relationship to Illy was the discovery of the coffee. I'm guessing that the vacuum sealed tin of coffee in that first set had been on the shelf on Mockingbird Lane for at least 2 months. And I knew nothing about what made a good or a bad espresso machine when I bought my first that afternoon. The cup of espresso I prepared that evening, however, was magical. I'd never tasted anything like it. I grew up in the late 50's and 60's when the only coffee on the grocer's shelf was Folgers or Maxwell House. It was prepared in purcolators and those big steel restaurant servers. Mr. Coffee came along when I was in junior high, but nobody I knew bothered to clean them properly, so that after the first month or two, they all made coffee that tasted like bitter, post-apocalyptic swamp-water. Freshly opened Illy espresso in a freshly opened espresso machine, however, was a revelation. The Illys -- Francesco, Ernesto, and now Andrea -- make decaf that tastes better than any cup (decaf or not) I'v ever had, and regular that tastes even better than that. It doesn't need sugar. It doesn't need cream, It certainly doesn't need 29 varieties of candy flavored sugar-syrup. (save those for Italian sodas, egg creams, and snow cones...) In fact, the only thing it needs is a little quiet conversation with someone interesting, and about 25 minutes of gentle contemplation. I was reading somewhere online a diatribe about Americans and their approach to coffee. It was one of those "ugly American" rants -- usually written by ex-pats, or some prematurely gray teenager in Paris. It talked about how we drink either the tasteless brown-water from an automatic drip, or poorly blended, over sugared/over creamed stale and improperly roasted mega-chain-storefront coffee. (You know -- there's one on every corner.) But nowhere did this curmudgeon talk about the real difference between us (the USA - us) and so many espresso-barflies in Europe and other destinations. -- It's the TIME. We tend to gulp down coffee on our way out the back door, or pick it up at a convenience store on our way to work. We make big thermos bottles full and carry it around for 8 hours -- all the time congratulating ourselves on the thermal wonder that keeps it hot, stagnant and oxidizing for so long. We drink in office break rooms where pots sit until they turn into brown, crusty, funeral urns. We drink from cups that are never washed. We drink coffee fast to get more caffeine in our systems. We buy the biggest cups available -- that could pass for gumbo or chili bowls -- and pour ourselves 24 ounces at a time. But let me tell you.... Or you may already know. Most of what we drink barely qualifies as coffee at all. Especially once you have tasted the genuine article. A cup of Illycaffe espresso will cost you upwards of $5 in most places in the world, but consider the value of what you're getting. So long as your taste buds are alive and kicking, your $5 has bought you membership in a very democratic club. Your $5 will get you the same cup as the wealthiest mogul, the most average accounting student, or the grundgey-est rock star. This is because of Illy's consistency. Illy pays coffee growers a premium -- 30% above market value for the very best of the crop. They remove every "bad" bean from their coffee -- and then they remove the beans the bad ones have touched. Their inspection and quality control standards would make the most anal-retentive IRS auditor tremble in his cheap cotton socks. And the result is potential. Even after all Illy does to insure quality, the final details of preparation depend on how many minutes the bag or can of Illycaffe has been open to the air, and on the temperature and purity of the water. The amount of oxygen in the water. The amount of pressure supplied by the machine. The warmth of the heavy little cup as it waits to be filled. The skill of the barista. The humidity. Wind direction. How far it is from the machine where the cup was filled --to your chair. Okay -- maybe not so much those last things. But Illycaffe has all the chance to make it to us ( Us in the US) fresh, as our own magic potions --made by Ben & Jerry's -- have to be served fresh in that little scrap of an ice cream store in London. FedEx runs a great (and fast) delivery service, and these 1-product specialty companies have learned from them. It takes less time to fly Illycaffe from Trieste to New York, than it takes to get my Ben & Jerrys from their regional depot by truck. In the end, one of those tiny, wildly and beautifully painted Illy cups taken straight with a long conversation about global weather change or the value of television in the modern world -- enjoyed sip by sip and in deep breaths -- will change the way you live your life. It truly is the last great taste of the modern world. And for that, you can thank Ernesto Illy and the Illys before and after him. Arrivederci e buona fortuna, Signore. ********************************************* REACH US BY EMAIL AT purcifuls@yahoo.com OR BY PHONE AT (806) 239 2927 during business hours. IF YOU DON'T GET A LIVE PERSON -- JUST KEEP TRYING! 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