They say travel broadens the mind. They say a lot of stupid shit like that, but I can tell you one thing I leaned after traveling in Italy…. for the last 50 years I’ve been doing coffee all wrong.

I drink black American coffee by the bucket. It sharpens the senses, pumps up the body and loosens the bowels.

Sometimes it’s better than sex. (I said “sometimes,” honey.)

Coffee doesn’t grow in Italy, although I suppose it could. It’s a New World plant exported from Columbia and Peru to every tropical climate with hills and people desperate enough to grow it at prices that forever keep them in poverty.

Starbucks didn’t invent the coffee “plantation of exploitation”, but they have perfected it. Including stealing the flavors with milk and cream and sugar and puffs of air from Italy. They even stole the size names. Nobody said “Venti” in Seattle until Howard Schultz told them they had to.

Starbucks left the taste in the old country and replaced the rich, smooth Italian flavors with burnt bitterness. All the better to sell the extras of mochas, lattes, and cappuccinos to keep the customers fat and addicted to the sugar. It’s like heroine for the suburbs.

Sure, the Italian coffee flavor is so much better. Sure, their little cups of expresso have enough caffeine to push a small cow through a colon. But I didn’t fuck up on flavor.

Starbucks left the best coffee off their menu, and that has always been my and every American’s mistake.

“‘Coffee correcto’ has just a little shot of alcohol,” Anna, the tour guide said. “Just enough to corrrrrect the coffee.” You really have to roll those rrr’s to get the effect.

Correcto indeed. All the benefits of my bucket of “cafe Americano”, plus a small buzz of happiness.

Three of them first thing in the morning is almost enough to make me look forward to “the day.”

Four is enough to make me close my eyes and dream happy little thoughts in a state that is neither awake nor asleep. The caffeine keeps you up. The booze makes life bearable.

Don’t ask me what shot they used. I didn’t really pay attention, and I’m too buzzed on my third correcto to look it up.

But the bottle was clear and poured quickly — maybe half a shot, maybe a little more. It’s a dry, distilled booze, that I’m guessing is in the 80-proof range. There were two different kinds, but I just let the bartender (I mean barista) choose.

If you Google the recipe, send it to me in the comments, or better yet ship a bottle or two to me, so I can spend the next “50 years” doing my coffee “correcto”.