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"Let's go to the bar," the foreign minister suggests. It is shortly after 10 p.m. and Federica Mogherini, with her long blond hair and a discreet pearl necklace, strides purposefully ahead, choosing a table at the front-left. A waiter rushes over. What would she like? "Nothing," the minister says pleasantly. Apologetically, she explains she prefers being "sober."  A married mother of two, Mogherini has been at the pinnacle of Italian diplomacy since February. Last week, her name was even thrown into the mix as a possible successor to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.   At 41, Mogherini is two years older than Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, but of all her predecessors in the Foreign Ministry in Rome, only Mussolini's son-in-law Count Galeazzo Ciano was younger at the beginning of his term.   On this evening in Vienna, however, following a meeting of EU foreign ministers, she denies that her relative youth could be construed as a potential shortcoming. "You can't demand generational change on the one hand and expect 40 years of experience on the other," she says.   Young, feminine and focused on issues: Mogherini embodies much of what the restless reformer Renzi values as he tries to awaken Italian politics from its torpor. In the European Parliament elections in May, voters thanked Renzi by handing him a 40.8 percent result, apparently the reward for a government that is focused on change. Among Social Democrats in the EU Parliament, the Italians now represent the largest faction.  The generational gulf between the former bunga bunga premier Berlusconi and Renzi is striking. But so too is the contrast between Foreign Minister Mogherini and those who came before her, particularly her divergence with Emma Bonino, the 65-year-old who held the office until February. The human rights activist and chain-smoking ex-European commissioner was considered to be indispensable because of her experience -- at least in the eyes of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.