Espresso Machine, the Courthouse

Espresso is a non-alcoholic beverage, the choice of many, but it is much more than a drink. There is the distinctive smell, the warm honey-like appearance, the basic ingredients, the complex chemical composition and the coffee machine. Espresso world is all that and more — it is a cultural icon of life in many parts of the world at the beginning of the 21st Century.

This is ‘REAL’ coffee and can of course be enjoyed at home, but it is also something that is now very much part of the social fabric of the 21st Century. 

Espresso Sign

Coffee Houses, as part of the fabric of society, have a long history dating back to the 15th Century. Then, in Middle Eastern countries men would gather to drink coffee, to discuss, to listen to music, to read books and to perhaps play games.  In the 17th Century Coffee Houses began to spread throughout Europe - to Vienna to Paris and to London. Today, they are to be found around the world.

The first coffee house in England opened in 1650 in Oxford and the first London coffee house opened in 1652 in St Michael’s Alley, Cornhill. London’s coffee houses were nicknamed “Penny Universities” because ‘for the price of a cup of coffee you could sit and join in the stimulating conversation with the great thinkers of the day’.

Espresso Print

There is something different about a coffee house - it is not a public house, nor is it a restaurant - and it is still very much a meeting place. European “cafes” regularly have an outdoor area, often on the pavement and with tables, chairs and umberallas. 

There are two significant developments both commented upon in Wikipedia (the free online encyclopedia). The first is the resurgence of the close association between the “cafe” and the spread of information and communication, with the rise of the internet cafe and wi-fi in the 1990s. The other is the recognition by Christians (in the latter half of the 20th Century) of the cafe culture and their use of it to introduce others to Jesus Christ.

We live in Espresso World where you can pay over £600 for an espresso machine for your home, yet millions of people still haven’t even clean drinking water.

It is to Espresso World that this blog is addressed.