Let us begin with some Italian geography. As an ardent enthusiast of Italian gelati, I have long been aware of an immutable axiom in the canon of ice-cream law - the further south you move down the Italian peninsula, the better the gelati get.
But as all students of physical gastronomy know, the exertion of any force in one direction elicits a reaction of equal force in the opposite direction. It is only recently that I discovered the postulate to the gelati phenomenon: the further north you move up the Italian peninsula, the better the cafes get.
You can get no further north in Italy than Piedmont - literally, the foot of the mountain. And the moment I set foot in its capital, Turin, I knew I had left the world of battered outdoor plastic tables and sun-faded Cinzano parasols far behind. Such things may be all very well on the grimy sidewalks of Calabria, but in the elegant 19th century piazzas of Turin they simply will not do.
What was it, I asked Eligio Savent Levet, proprietor of the Torino Caffe on the Piazza San Carlo, that made Turin's venerable old cafes so remarkable? For remarkable they certainly are. The Torino Caffe is a lavishly decorated spectacle of silk brocade walls, intricately painted wooden panels, sculpted mantelpieces, stone-carved statuary, mirrors, crystal chandeliers, gilded friezes and polished marble floors. Dotted here and there in this ornate landscape, like so many nobili in their private palazzi, were cafe patrons whiling away the time with chatter, newspapers and mid-morning refreshments.
Such magnificence, I had to admit, was worth at least a lick or two of any top-class gelato. Signor Savent Levet suggested I try instead a bimbo, a house speciality. And while a bow-tied bartender went to work with a blender, shaved ice, a cocktail glass and a bowl of tropical fruit, I listened.
Savent Levet was firm. Turin's long-lived and cosmopolitan cafe traditions, he said, had nothing to do with southern Italy at all. There was, first, a question of geography: Turin, just a hop and a skip from the Alps, had inherited sophisticated habits from northern Europe - it was more like Paris or Vienna than Naples.
Second, there was the matter of climate. It was all very well for southern Italians to lounge about on sunny streets, but in Turin it snows; Turinese cafes were therefore indoor cafes with a penchant for comfort and grand style.
And third, I discovered, if it was cold outside, there was no lack of hot air inside. Italians love to talk, said Savant Levet, especially if politics are involved. While Garibaldi was charging about the Sicilian countryside last century with armed redshirts reunifying Italy, in the north, Turin's cafes became hotbeds of non-stop political debate by politicians, dreamers, poets, revolutionaries, reactionaries, society dandies and assorted hangers-on. The intrigue may be gone, but I was assured there is plenty left to talk about.
I drained my bimbo. I would talk no more. On a cold winter's day like today, I decided, I could happily trade a Palermo gelateria for the warmth and elegance of the Caffe Torino. But were other Turinese cafes up to the mark? A cafe-crawl was the only way to find out.
A few minutes later, I was ensconced in the window corner of Al Bicerin. A great stone church, the Sanctuario della Consolata, loomed austerely before me. With just eight tables in a small wood-panelled room entirely bereft of gilt, plush and rococo Piedmontese curlicues, the Bicerin, I thought, looked rather austere as well. But then I met owner Signora Marite Costa, and all was revealed.
"You have chosen Count Cavour's seat," she said. Cavour, of course, was Italy's first prime minister, and a master of Turin's fierce political debates. Seeking refuge, he would come to the Bicerin, a cafe that was Turin's oldest, plainer than the others and, most important, frequented by the prim and proper, non-fire-breathing dowagers of the Piedmontese aristocracy; they used the Bicerin to warm up in after services in the cold and draughty church opposite.
If Cavour was an accomplished politician, he was an equally gifted concoctor of hot cafe drinks. It was here, I was told, that he refined the bicerin, a mixture of coffee, hot chocolate and cream. And if the well-born women of Piedmont preferred their surroundings plain, they had no objection to this rich and luxurious brew - it became one of the most popular drinks in Turin.
I sampled a bicerin, and it gave me enough courage to explore the frigid marble depths of the Consolata church myself.
Inspired by chocolate, I made my way to the Galleria Subalpina, a sumptuous, fin-desiecle arcade built in graceful and curving wrought iron. The home of the CaffePasticceria Baratti e Milano, it must, most decidedly, have attracted a racier clientele than the matrons of Al Bicerin.
"Oh why," wrote one of Baratti e Milano's more fevered male patrons, "am I not allowed - by an inopportune law - to approach you and kiss you, one by one? You beautiful, rounded mouths belonging to young ladies. Kiss you with the lingering taste of cream and chocolate. I have fallen in love with all the ladies who eat pastries and cakes at the confectioners." Those kinds of sentiment too vigorously expressed at Baratti e Milano's wood-carved, mirror-backed counters might get you arrested today, but the chocolate, cream and pastries there are as seductive as ever.
The Turinese, in fact, claim chocolate for themselves. "Swiss chocolate-makers learned it all from us - they simply took our recipes home after working here," Cristina DonatiMarello, cafe director, insisted. Nor would she tell exactly what went into Baratti e Milano's cioccolata calda con panna, a divine hot chocolate so thick and rich the spoon practically stood up in it. And indeed, I thought, wiping a moustache of cream away, if I were a Swiss spy, here was a secret worth crossing the Alps for.
But it is no secret that the real business of cafes, in the end, is not chocolate, or pastries, or silk brocade, or political gossip, or kisses. It is coffee. Nor is it a secret that Italians are among the most discriminating coffee drinkers in the world. Was the coffee of Turin, I asked Stefano Cavallero, proud proprietor of the Caffe San Carlo, up to the decor that surrounded it?
By way of answer, Cavallero guided me past swathes of red plush, tall marble columns and statues of lightly clad Roman maidens, to the bar.
Italian cafes, he said as the San Carlo's chief coffee-maker set to work at a gleaming, steaming eight-cup espresso machine, are as sociologically complex as Italy itself. No institution is as important in the country's dayto-day social life - there are neighbourhood cafes, football cafes, business cafes, bohemian cafes, intellectual cafes. Cafes are the first places where young people meet, and the last places where old men say goodbye. Cafes keep Italians together.
Yet, said Cavallero, Italians will choose their cafe first and last for its coffee. The coffee beans themselves, the professional quality of the machine used, the practised skills of the maker all contribute to the final result, a drink superior to the one we could make at home.
A small cup, about one-third full of strong, dark, fragrant coffee was placed before me. A modest gulp would have seen it off in a second. I stirred in a little sugar, sipped and gave a long sigh. Cavallero serves a very special blend - the best coffee in Italy, he says - and compares it only to the espresso served in the Caffe Greco in Rome and the Caffe Florian in Venice.
But I disagreed. For satisfaction given, I could compare it only to some of the finer gelati of the south.