Antonio's dream is to make "the most beautiful coffee on earth," but this drink, now so popular, has a complex and intriguing history, thick with mysteries, legends, anecdotes, even anathemas against a usage that in the early days distanced men from the domestic hearth.

Leading us on this journey first to the East and then to European capitals will be a female figure, an Arab woman whom we will discover to be "the aroma," the essence of coffee.

From the Orient to Venice, from Paris to London, coffee will allow the actors of te...