Is coffee like wine? It is a parallel proposed by many and not without a good reason. The hedonic quality offered by coffee is not inferior to that of wine, but there is a lack of that "knowledge" that could make coffee culture ostentative, inducing people to describe what they perceive and hence to be delighted by an excellent preparation and to refuse coffee prepared with poor quality origins or spoilt by mistakes during preparation stage.

Coffee production process is long: it begins in tropical countries and ends at home, where sometimes a moka pot is handled without skill, or at the coffee shop where who transform coffee beans into an espresso cup could lack technical and practical skills.
The open challenge for our institute includes teaching the different levels involved in the production process how to assess the drink by using one's own tools: brain and sensory organs.

Our epoch features impressive provocations. Not only the fork between poor quality blends and excellent ones is increasing, but also single origins and new ways of preparing coffee at work or at home are appearing: new faces of a traditional product whose success is tightly bound to users' knowledge.

Therefore the path to development runs through increasing cross-talk among the different sectors of the production process. And Iiac has the vocation, the competence and the strength for being the catalyst of a true coffee renaissance.

Luigi Odello, secretary general of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters