In the City of Hamilton there are numerous places to get a coffee and pick yourself up after the drowsiness of the Christmas holidays.Driving east, however, the number of places starts to drop off sharply the closer you get to St George. Now coffee lovers, can stop off at the Rosewood Tucker’s Point Club for their daily buzz, thanks to a new espresso bar installed in its elegant library.“We want to open this to the public,” said Serge Bottelli, head chef at Tucker’s Point. “People can pop by and see the hotel. People think we are a private hotel, but there are no private hotels in Bermuda. Of course, there are some parts of the hotel that are only open to members such as the golf club and beach club.”The peacefulness of the espresso bar at the hotel is heady contrast to the bustling coffee joints in town. You can sit on antique-looking furniture, admire the view of the ocean, read about how to improve your love life in the provided girlie magazines, or even play a board game like ‘Clue’. Sometimes ladies pop by to play bridge.“I use to drink espresso like there was no tomorrow,” said Mr Bottelli. “Now I might have one a day. I like to mix an espresso with a regular coffee. An espresso means ‘fast’ in Italian. It is a fast coffee. You can see a beautiful illustration of how Italians traditionally drink espresso in the movie, ‘The Godfather’. In that movie you see a man, who is eventually killed, drinking espresso in a very noisy fashion.” Mr Bottelli made slurping sound. “That is the old fashioned way so you get all the flavours of the coffee from the cup.”He said there is an art to making good espresso. The first key to making it is to have a good machine. Tucker’s Point use an Italian machine called a Cimbali. Smaller versions of it can be purchased from MEF for home use.“Our Cimbali is a very sensible machine,” said Mr Bottelli. “When you are making espresso you need to make sure you don’t have hard water, so we have filters. It takes a few minutes of training to use the machine, but the more you make espresso, the better you get at it. To have beautiful coffee, you should see the caramel coloured foam coming to the top. Don’t brew it for too short a time. Then it is very watery. When you do it too long, then it will be maybe too strong.”