Coffee courses China with Italian Barista Certificate
An interview with Viviana Scanu, the trainer of Italian Barista Certificate China
My name is Viviana Scanu and I am a trainer in Espresso Academy China. As an Italian from Napoli I have always felt the importance of coffee and coffee culture in my life. When the owner of our Italian culture center Italyamo found out about Espresso Academy we were super excited to finally have a chance to further promote Italian Culture in China adding such an important part of our culture, coffee. After a rough start, due to the covid situation, our school is now starting to expand and getting more and more known in China, also thanks to the cooperation with the Italian Embassy and the Italian Trade Agency in China that support our goal of promotion of the Italian Barista Certificate.
Which is the coffee education situation in China?
China is the motherland of Tea Culture, but in the past few years Chinese starting developing a grater passion towards coffee. Chinese people love to study and care a lot about knowledge behind the cup of coffee they drink. Many people in China starts studying coffee just because they like drinking it and want to understand how can they make a great cup of coffee for themselves at home. As many other countries, the most known coffee certificate is the SCA certificate. Most of the students are quite keen about latte art.
Why did you choose Italian Barista Certificate?
We strongly believe in the promotion of an Italian product and we believe that the practice given by the Italian Barista Certificate can really prepare students to what they can expect if they work in a cafè.
The most bizzarre situation you encountered as a coffee trainer
Most of the students that approach our classes are not a fan of espresso, which is drank quite rarely in China, reason why it is always quite funny teaching them how to drink espresso and making them taste over-extracted and under-extracted espressos. The face they make when tasting a cup of ristretto is priceless!
According to you, which are the most important values of the Italian Barista Certificate?
The passion of the trainers for the subject itself and also the quality of the training.
The Italian Barista Certificate includes many regional recipes, which on eis your favourite? Which one is the student’s favourite?
Both me and most of the students agree on putting Shakerato among our favourite cups of coffee. Fun fact about most of the chinese students we have had: they don’t really enjoy the taste of caffè leccese due to the similarity between almond milk and many Chinese cough syrup (in China many cough syrup are made with almonds extract).
