La Perfetta Sinfonia

After nine months' leisurely sampling of the espresso coffee-bean blends readily-available at the local supermarkets, I have settled on Lavazza Qualità Oro as my preferred default. In my erstwhile coffee phase of the ’90s and ’00s, the same company’s Qualità Rossa was my usual choice - so my tastes haven’t travelled very far in the interim. I’m also partial to Illy’s Classico blend, but that’s somewhat more expensive.

Some Qualità Oro is shown above, in one of a set of four demi-tasse cups from a line called Grand Hotel by Andrew Martin (who don’t seem to be in the crockery business any more). I bought them, apparently unused, & still in their original gift-box from a charity shop in Monmouth for £8 total.

On the coffee’s packaging is the none-too-meaningful slogan “Perfect Symphony”: not the kind of phrase I can imagine any British food or drink supplier using. Then again, I’d been blithely unaware that it was an Ed Sheeran song title: for all I know, perhaps his words appear subliminally on all manner of grocery items. On Lavazza’s Italian website, there is a bit more context: “La perfetta sinfonia del gusto che puoi assaporare ogni giorno” (“the perfect symphony of flavour you can savour every day”).