How Kahlúa is made

Since coffee is pretty much the pivotal element of Kahlúa's flavour, it seems only right that an exploration of the liqueur's production should begin with the coffee beans used to make Kahlúa.

The Mexican state of Veracruz is awash with verdant rolling hills, snow-capped mountains, and brightly painted, Mexican picture-postcard towns. The site of coffee's first introduction into Mexico at the end of the 18th Century, this region offers ideal conditions for coffee farming due to its rich volcanic soil, consistent rainfall, and cooler mountain climate, which allows the beans to mature slowly and develop deeper, more complex flavour.

Veracruz is a land still rich in densely green coffee plantations, as well as sugar cane and vanilla. It's a landscape then that very much explains the flavour of Kahlúa and why it should find its origins here.

To understand coffee, it's helpful to appreciate that the Coffea genus is chiefly split into two main species: Coffea Arabica and Coffea Robusta. The former accounts for approximately 60% of all coffee grown globally and is the main coffee crop in Mexico. It also produces a softer, fruitier, more subtle flavour profile than its robust cousin.

Additionally, since the Arabica plant yields less coffee fruit than Robusta and is more challenging to grow and maintain, it is a significantly more expensive commodity. Yet, as you might have guessed by now, Kahlúa is made exclusively from Coffea Arabica and always from Veracruz.

The step-by-step journey towards making a bottle of Kahlúa starts with seeds.

Planting the seeds

The process begins in the mountains of Veracruz, Mexico, where coffee bean seeds are planted at elevations up to 1,700 meters. Shaded nurseries provide the perfect growing conditions, ensuring that the young plants develop strong roots.

Plants to plantations

Once the seedlings mature, they're transplanted into the coffee fields or 'fincas', where they are planted in the shade of trees. This, combined with the cool mountain air, helps ensure slower growth, allowing a more complex flavour to develop. It takes four years for the plants to bear fruit, producing the cherries that contain the coffee beans.

Harvesting by hand

Once the cherries on the coffee plants have turned from green to red, indicating their ripeness, they are handpicked by skilled farmers during the harvest season between October and March. This traditional harvesting method ensures only the best cherries are chosen. The outer surrounding fruit is carefully removed to reveal the prized green coffee beans inside.

Sorting for quality

The beans are meticulously sorted by weight, size, and colour to guarantee the highest quality. Only the 'Primera Clase' of the finest green coffee beans make it through to the next stage.

Drying, resting & then roasting the beans

The selected beans are sent to Pernod Ricard's production facility in Arandas, close to Guadalajara in West Mexico, where they rest in 1,100kg hessian sacks for a six-month drying phase. Only then are they ready for roasting, the crucial process that transforms the raw green beans into aromatic brown coffee beans. By coffee roasting standards, a lower-than-normal temperature is used, combined with a long roast time to produce a generally brighter coffee flavour with higher acidity.

The now chocolate-coloured and heavily scented roasted beans are transferred to a grinding unit and run through a Tamizador or 'sieve' unit, a loudly vibrating stack of fine mesh-sifting grids that ensures the grounds are neither too fine nor too large, and thus will extract consistently.

Brewing

Before any of the ground beans can see a drop of water, however, they are rested for a further 12-48 hours. This resting period facilitates the release of excess carbon dioxide while also allowing for the flavours within the bean to stabilise.

The next step is akin to an immense cold-brew; a huge steel tank is filled with rested coffee grinds and filtered water at room temperature, and left to steep. Once the brew time is complete, the coffee liquid is then separated from the unwanted grounds by running the combined mulch through a long centrifugal filter called, cunningly, the Separador de Café. This strong, flavourful coffee is the flavour base for all Kahlúa liqueurs.

Blending

With the core coffee element now ready for use, the next stage is to turn this into a liqueur. The team at Kahlúa make a vanilla extract using vanilla pods grown also in the verdant hills of Veracruz, infused in neutral alcohol. This house-made vanilla extract is then blended with the all-important coffee base, along with rum sourced from Veracruz, cane sugar and a little caramel added for colour. The whole resultant blend is then filtered and stored at approximately 40% alc./vol.. This is the first blending stage of Kahlúa.

Then there's another waiting period of while the blended liqueur rests, much like you should rest a joint before carving. Once the liquid has matured for 48 hours, it is re-filtered, then re-blended with more rum and diluted to bottling strength using filtered water.

Bottling and distribution

The finished liqueur is bottled in Fort Smith, Arkansas, USA, and Manzanares, Spain. From there, Kahlúa is shipped worldwide, ready to be enjoyed in Espresso Martinis, White Russians, Baby Guinness or simply with coffee or milk. Or even blended with ice cream for a decadent treat.