“So, what is it?” Moreno Faina wafts the perfume towards me. I inhale. Tropical fruit is my first guess, and I’m wrong. Then, suddenly, my nose knows — it’s jasmine. I’m with the director of Illy’s Università del Caffè in Trieste, and we’re sniffing out the 16 notes that comprise the Italian coffee’s signature scent.

“We worked with ‘The Nose’ — Venetian master perfumer Lorenzo Dante Ferro — to identify them,” says Moreno, a tall, fast-talking Roman whose love of coffee brought him here to Italy’s far northeastern corner three decades ago.