A barista is the person behind the espresso machine: someone who knows coffee, prepares it properly, and serves it with some care about how it looks in the cup.

Where the word comes from

Barista is Italian for barkeeper. In Italy a barista serves everything behind the bar, drinks of all kinds. In English the word narrowed: it came to mean specifically the person who makes espresso-based coffee, usually in a coffee shop. The plural in Italian is baristi for men and bariste for women.

What a barista actually knows

• Coffee blends, and how origin and roast change the cup
• Roasting, at least well enough to judge a bean
• How to operate and maintain the machine – including the parts most people never clean
• Milk: temperature, texture, and how to foam it properly
• Latte art, which is the visible part, and the last part to learn

Most of it can be learned on a barista course. The rest comes from making a great many cups.

The machine does some of it for you

A fully automatic machine takes care of the grinding, dosing, brewing and milk. What it can't decide for you is which beans, which grind setting, how cold the milk is, and whether the cup is warm. Those four are still yours – and they're most of the difference between an ordinary cup and a good one.

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