In the year of the Tet Offensive, a gorgeous blond neighbour worked at Quist’s, the famous Melbourne coffee shop, and brewed me my first real cuppa; white and very sweet. Later, after MSO concerts at the Town Hall, when the sultry second viola didn’t reciprocate my attentions, I flagellated my palate with brutal espressos at Pellegrino’s. When we were whistling It’s Time and Gough got the job, a mate made replica cappuccinos on an old dry-cleaner’s boiler at his dad’s engineering shed. It took an hour to work up a head of steam, so we were grateful when it came, despite its austere metallic overtones. In the eighties, I developed a taste for the bitter-sweet of late-night correttos, a short black generously laced with Vecchia Romagna brandy, when I worked in Bologna and courted the signorinas into the wee early hours.
The most memorable coffee in recent years was a double-banger latte that a local coffee snob made in Port Fairy while testing one of his new bling machines out back in the shed. By far the foulest was in Tocumwall early one morning when I was driving from Carlton to The Reef. Desperate for a fix, I staggered into a likely looking cafe and asked for a cup of their best. “Just a moment, sir,” said the little old lady at the counter. “I’ll go and open a fresh jar of Moccona.” Worse than worst railway coffee, the infamous café olé that Société Nationale des Chemins de fer français [SNCF] inflicts on its passengers, I managed to slide it down the neck and keep it there. But it made for a long long drive.
