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I drink at least a couple of espressos every day and love the flavor of coffee.

A good espresso to me is a little bit salty; you just become used to a good taste. Anytime I go into a new place and they don't clean their machine properly or the water temperature isn't right, it tastes awful.

If I'm in Italy, I'm going to have a cappuccino and two small brioches and then a mix of orange and grapefruit. I don't drink tea in Italy.

I'm actually like a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop kind of guy. So I love the local shops that are kind of like one-off chains in Los Angeles, and I usually get a soy flat white.

When I first discovered in the early 1980s the Italian espresso bars in my trip to Italy, the vision was to re-create that for America - a third place that had not existed before. Starbucks re-created that in America in our own image; a place to go other than home or work. We also created an industry that did not exist: specialty coffee.

I have two much-beloved stovetop espresso pots at home, plus a couple French presses I couldn't resist buying because they were so pretty. If I had to imbibe at Starbucks, I'd want a mocha with an extra shot.

I like cappuccino, actually. But even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all.

I love the simplicity, the ingredients, the culture, the history and the seasonality of Italian cuisine. In Italy people do not travel. They cook the way grandma did, using fresh ingredients and what is available in season.

Espresso, made by steam expressing finely ground coffee, is rich in flavor and aroma and chlorogenic acids, but not very concentrated at all in caffeine.

Australians are coffee snobs. An influx of Italian immigrants after World War II ensured that - we probably had the word 'cappuccino' about 20 years before America. Cafe culture is really big for Aussies. We like to work hard, but we take our leisure time seriously.