Perusing the food and drink archives of my other weblog tonight, I came across this passage about espresso that I'd forgotten about. It's from Andrea Illy's book Espresso Coffee: The Science of Quality (yes, that Illy). Here's what he says about the experience of espresso:

Espresso consumption is an aesthetic experience, like tasting a vintage wine or admiring a painting. It is a search for beauty and goodness and improving the quality of our life. As it offers such subjectively ineffable ‘goodness’, devoid of defects, the only adequate reaction to it is astonishment — astonishment that can give birth to enthusiasm, and therefore intellectual and spiritual enrichment.

Astonishment is an accurate description of the feeling I get when I taste a great shot. That the seed of the coffee bush, painstakingly grown and picked, transported over oceans, baked to a dark brown, ground to tiny pieces, and finally hit with high-pressure hot water could yield a brew so thick and sweet and lasting just a few moments is really quite amazing when you think about it.