13 Oct 2026
Di Lorenzo has been roasting Italian coffee in Sydney since 2003, which means two generations of this family have watched Australians order coffee in ways that would raise eyebrows in Naples. None of it is wrong. Australian coffee culture is one of the best in the world, and it got there by ignoring a few Italian conventions on purpose.
Still, the rules are worth knowing, because each one exists for a reason that has to do with the coffee itself.
Rule one: no cappuccino after 11am
In Italy, milk is treated as food rather than a drink. A cappuccino is breakfast, taken with a pastry and nothing else. After a meal, a milky coffee is considered heavy on a full stomach, so from midday onwards it is espresso only.
The practical version of this rule: milk coats the palate and softens everything underneath it. If you want to taste what a roaster actually did with a bean, drink it black at least once. Our Premium Quality Blend was built to work in milk all day, but it tells you far more about itself in a short black at 3pm.
Rule two: espresso is drunk standing
You walk into the bar, you order, you drink it in two mouthfuls at the counter, you pay, you leave. The whole thing takes ninety seconds. In many Italian bars, sitting at a table costs more, because table service is a separate thing you are paying for.
There is a coffee reason behind the habit as well. An espresso is at its best in the first thirty seconds or so. The crema falls, the temperature drops, and the balance between sweetness and bitterness shifts quickly. Italians drink it fast because it is better fast.
Rule three: there is no such thing as a latte
Order a latte in Italy and you will be handed a glass of milk, because that is what the word means. The drink Australians are after is a caffè latte. Leave off the caffè and you leave off the coffee.
The same trap catches a few other words. A macchiato in Italy is an espresso with a spoonful of foam, served in a small glass, not the layered half-glass drink most Australian cafes make. A caffè lungo is an espresso pulled with more water, not a long black.
Rule four: a flat white does not exist either
The flat white is ours. The usual story credits either Sydney or Auckland in the mid 1980s, and both sides have been arguing about it since. Whoever started it, the drink is a genuinely Australasian invention: less foam than a cappuccino, more coffee flavour than a latte, and a thinner texture that lets the espresso through.
It is also the drink that forced roasters here to think differently. A blend that works for a quick Italian espresso can taste thin under that much milk. Our Forte is the opposite case: dark, heavy, built so the coffee still comes through a 220ml flat white in a busy cafe.
Rule five: coffee comes after the meal, never with it
In Italy, coffee closes the meal. It arrives after dessert, on its own, and it is an espresso. Asking for a coffee alongside your pasta will be done for you, politely, and remembered.
The corrective version is the caffè corretto, an espresso with a splash of grappa or sambuca. That one is allowed at almost any hour.
Which rules we break ourselves
Most of them, honestly. We supply hundreds of Sydney cafes, and the drinks going across those counters are flat whites, large lattes, iced lattes in January and cappuccinos well past eleven. We roast for the way people here actually drink, not for a rule book.
What we have kept is the part underneath the rules: short roasts, blends built to a recipe rather than to a trend, and coffee that is bagged within the week it was roasted. The rest is yours to break.
If you want to taste what the Italian side of it is like, pull a short black from the Premium Quality Blend 250g and drink it standing at your kitchen bench. That is the whole tradition in ninety seconds.
