Coffee cocktails
Words by Simon Difford
In 1947, an American journalist, Stanton Delaphane visited the bar at Ireland's Shannon Airport where the bartender made him an Irish Coffee. Stan was so impressed that on returning home he passed the recipe onto the bartender at his local bar, the Buena Vista Café in San Francisco. So the popularity of the best-known coffee cocktail or 'liqueur coffee' was assured. But what about the others...
No restaurant dining experience or dinner party is complete without freshly brewed coffee followed by a glass of liqueur or spirit. At its simplest coffee cocktails combine these two drinks. In its more complex form, coffee cocktails combine coffee's bitterness and a liqueur's sweetness to create a balanced drink. In the same way that the liqueur counteracts the bitterness of the coffee, the coffee's stimulant properties counteract the effects of the alcohol.
