Kahlúa is Mexico's original coffee liqueur, made since 1936 from a base of sugar cane spirit blended with rum, corn syrup, vanilla and 100% Arabica coffee grown around Veracruz. The coffee is slow-roasted and combined with the spirit base to create a thick, dark, intensely aromatic liqueur that has become the essential building block of some of the world's most enduring cocktails.
The nose is dense with roasted coffee, backed by a familiar bittersweet edge and a touch of earthy richness. On the palate it's thick, sweet and full of dark-roast coffee character, with developing notes of chocolate and a faint hint of chicory adding complexity beneath the sweetness. The finish is long, sweet and coffee-forward, coating the palate in the same way a good espresso martini should - unmistakably Kahlúa from first sip to last.
First produced in Veracruz by the Blanco family, Kahlúa takes its name from an Arabic-Veracruzano word roughly meaning ‘house of the Acolhua people’, a nod to the region's indigenous heritage. It has since become a cornerstone of the modern cocktail cabinet, essential to a White Russian, an Espresso Martini and a B-52, and remains the world's best-selling coffee liqueur nearly ninety years after it was first bottled.
