Ernesto Illy, Chairman of Coffee Company, Is Dead at 82
Posted by TheShot on 06 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Café Society, Roasting
News has been slow to hit the States, but the New York Times finally ran a story this morning on Dr. Ernesto Illy, chairman of Illycaffè and one of the world’s most notable espresso enthusiasts, who died Sunday night at the age of 82: Ernesto Illy, Chairman of Coffee Company, Is Dead at 82 - New York Times
I don’t know what it is about reporters at the Times, but they can’t seem to hold on to any of the bright ones. Just as their story last month on the new Blue Bottle Cafe could only focus on the price tag of their siphon bar (“At Last, a $20,000 Cup of Coffee”), today’s obituary opened by only being able to describe Illy coffee as “expensive”:
Ernesto Illy, who as chairman of Illycaffè, maker of an expensive brand of coffee, was renowned as a scientific perfectionist of coffee and especially as an evangelist of espresso, died Sunday in Trieste, Italy. He was 82.
If there isn’t a rampant shortage of descriptive adjectives among New York Times reporters lately, one wonders if their obsessive focus on the cost of coffee reflects a lot of reporter resentment over pay scales at the Times these days.
Meanwhile, the Illy Web site has been paying a nice tribute to the grand doctor: Illy - Homepage.
3 Comments »
on 06 Feb 2008 at 2:21 pm PT 1.Mark Prince said …
Hrm. I think the NYT ran that first paragraph because Dr. Illy himself was fond of calling his coffee expensive. He would point out that his company paid more for coffee beans than just about anyone else in the business (in Italy) - and that was very much true.
They were doing this in the 1980s and early 1990s, and Illy was a force in establishing the “premium price market” for coffee from the farmer side for a long long time - going back to the collapse of the world coffee prices in the late 80s / early 90s.
In the second or third paragraph, they even have a quote from the Doctor himself saying as much.
Mark
on 06 Feb 2008 at 3:50 pm PT 2.TheShot said …
Hey Mark — it’s funny that I would see this comment of yours at the exact moment where I was about to append a link to your great tribute to the man on your CoffeeGeek.com site:
http://www.coffeegeek.com/opinions/coffeeatthemoment/02-04-2008
In any case, I’d like to think that the Times’ writer did that deliberately, based on the details you’ve pointed out here. But knowing that the one common truth about all reporters is that they’re lazy, I’m perhaps less confident than you.
It parallels that old saying, one of my all-time favorites, mind you: never suspect conspiracy as an explanation where incompetence will suffice.
Btw, my wife bought me a copy of “Espresso Coffee: The Science of Quality” (2nd Ed.) for Christmas last year. Now I’m no stranger to reading science textbooks — I used to work under National Institutes of Health and Dept. of Energy funding grants. But I am only on chapter 3, and my head is starting to spin!
on 12 Feb 2008 at 4:27 am PT 3.Mark Prince said …
Re reporters being lazy - I’d agree with you for the most part, and have a lot of first hand experience with reporters being VERY lazy (coff coff Vancouver Sun, coff coff), but this is the NY Times, and the obits are done by staff reporters (not “contributing reporters” like the less than fact-checked $20K Siphon story); they have a pretty tight leash over at the Times, and after all, Peter Meehan, the guy who writes those INCREDIBLE articles for the Times on coffee is a staff reporter.
Re the book - yeah - it took me five tries to read the first book through, and I’m still trying to read the second edition myself.