Aosta · Italy

The cup of friendship

If you sit down at the end of a meal with somebody from here, a turned wooden vessel will arrive in front of you: low, round-bellied, with a lid and a varying number of spouts set around it. This is the cup of friendship. Inside are hot coffee, grappa, genepì, lemon peel and sugar. The rule concerns not the recipe but the gesture: the lid comes off when you begin and is not replaced until the cup is empty, and the cup is not set down on the table. It passes from hand to hand, each person drinking from their own spout, and it keeps going round until nothing remains. It is not a shared glass for the sake of washing up less. It is a way of obliging a group of people to stay seated together until the end.

Go deeper

Why so many spouts?

So that everyone has their own and the cup can go round without stopping. Numbers vary, from two up to a dozen, and a cup is chosen for the number of people who usually sit at that table. They are turned from a single piece, often maple or walnut, and carved with hearts, rosettes, geometric patterns, sometimes a phrase. The best come from the hands of the same craftsmen who exhibit at the Sant'Orso fair, and a family cup may be a century old.

What are the ingredients?

Caffè alla valdostana: strong hot coffee, grappa, a little genepì, lemon peel and sugar. Sugar is also run around the rims of the spouts, and in some houses the alcohol is lit for a few seconds before the lid goes on. The proportions change from family to family and nobody writes them down. The recipe is inherited by watching whoever makes it, which means every cup tastes faintly of one particular house.

Can I buy one?

Yes, and it is worth telling them apart. Shops in the centre sell every quality, from cups turned by machine and stamped with a pattern to the work of a craftsman who signs the piece. The difference shows underneath the base and inside the carving. If you come to the Sant'Orso fair at the end of January you will find them beside the people who made them, which is the best way to understand how much work a cup contains.

Where it is

45.7372, 7.3155 · Open in Maps

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