The Espresso Martini Is Back. Can We All Just Admit It Sucks?

Exploring a drink I hate—and a few reasons why it came back into our lives.

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I’m going to let you in on a secret: Almost every coffee person I know hates anything coffee-flavored that isn’t coffee. And no item—coffee soap, coffee-scented candles, coffee cheese—better represents that dislike than the espresso martini. (Coffee ice cream is a close second, though.)  

Is this observation entirely based on anecdotal evidence? Yes. Do I fully expect baristas, former and current, to jump into the comments and tell me they actually love espresso martinis and resent being pigeonholed by my baseless comments? Sure. But I still stand by them: Coffee is delicious, yet coffee ruins everything it’s added to. 

So I was utterly taken aback when the espresso martini—a cocktail indelibly associated with 1980s kitsch—came roaring back into relevancy in 2021. In June of that year, Becky Hughes, reporting for the New York Times, shared a quote from Yelp’s data science team: “In the first six months of 2021, ‘the rate of mentions of espresso martinis in U.S. food and restaurant reviews is up nearly 300 percent from the same period three years earlier.’” 

Every generation has its ungodly drink that promises to get you wildly intoxicated while helping you stay awake. In college, I lived below a fraternity that went through so many containers of Monster Energy that the idea the drink sponsored them became folklore among my group of friends. From Four Loko to Red Bull and vodka to Irish coffee, we seem to get a trendy new version of booze-plus-caffeine every few years.

But the espresso martini might be in a category all its own, less fleeting than a simple trend. Since the drink came back, there’s been no indication that the espresso martini is stepping down as the caffeinated alcoholic drink of choice. In June, Nation’s Restaurant News reported, “Espresso Martinis are found on 5% of U.S. menus, up 164% over the past four years.” 

The question that’s been gnawing at me for years (yeah, OK, two years, but that’s still plural) is, why now? Why is a drink I think is revolting finding a new lease on life now? I have four entirely unproven theories why I think the espresso martini has discovered newfound relevancy—much to my chagrin. 

One: Coffee Is Objectively Better Now

Last year, I interviewed Robert Simonson, a drinks and cocktail writer, about his then-newly released book, “Modern Classic Cocktails: 60+ Stories and Recipes from the New Golden Age in Drinks.” In the book, he includes the espresso martini, or what was first called the vodka espresso, as one of the new modern classics. 

The vodka espresso was invented by British bartending legend Dick Bradsell, who says a model came up to him at London’s Soho Brasserie and requested a drink that would “fuck me up and then wake me up.” 

The model is never named in this origin story, and there’s some debate about whether the mysterious patron was even a model at all. “The never-to-be-known woman is just one of many details about the Espresso Martini that have been obscured by the mists of time,” Simonson writes. 

Simonson dedicates a significant portion of his book to the drink (most cocktails get a few paragraphs; the espresso martini gets a full two pages), tracing its history and evolution. In its first incarnation, as the vodka espresso, “there was no coffee liqueur in the drink ... only, as the name would indicate, shots of vodka and espresso, tied together by a little simple syrup.” 

In the past, we’ve talked about coffee growing and maturing in waves, and the first ascent of the espresso martini occurred when coffee shops weren’t nearly as ubiquitous as they are now. For his book, Simonson interviewed Dick Bradsell’s daughter, Beatrice Bradsell, and she estimates that her father would have invented the cocktail in 1985—a time when Starbucks was still nascent. (Starbucks originally started as a storefront serving roasted beans, but in 1984, according to a Starbucks timeline, “[Howard] Schultz convinces the founders of Starbucks to test the coffeehouse concept in downtown Seattle, where the first Starbucks® Caffè Latte [was] served.”) 

The term “specialty coffee,” meanwhile, was coined by Erna Knutson in 1974, and the Specialty Coffee Association formed in 1982. This was a time when “Americans were drinking almost as much instant coffee as they were brewed coffee because they tasted the same.” (If you’re a newer Boss Barista follower, you should check out my podcast episode on Erna, which I re-released in 2019, to learn about a true legend of the coffee world.) While I don’t know personally what coffee tasted like during this era, I do know that coffee quality has improved drastically since then. 

If 1974 was a benchmark moment, when instant and regular ol’ drip coffee tasted much the same, it’s safe to assume that the espresso Bradsell was using was probably not that great. If I had to guess, the first espresso martini might have tasted bitter and harsh—but effective at “waking up” Bradsell’s mystery patron. 

When I talked to Simonson for my interview, I asked why he thought the espresso martini was popular once more, against the backdrop of our current era’s totally different coffee landscape. My guess was because coffee is better now than it was in the ’80s—but then he mentioned another contributing factor.

Two: By Virtue of Coffee Being Better, So Are Coffee Liqueurs

One of the lovely things about Simonson’s book is that most of the cocktail recipes come directly from the folks who invented them, or from people who have first-hand knowledge or experience of their inception. The book preserves cocktail history so that hopefully, the true origins of these classic drinks will never be lost. Beatrice, speaking of her father’s legacy, says he continued to tweak the drink for years, inspired by the Brandy Alexander, a drink traditionally served for dessert and which is made with cognac, crème de cacao, and cream.

“In his mind, the Brandy Alexander works so well because it took two quite different flavors [brandy and cream] and used modifiers to bridge the gaps in the palate,” she tells Simonson. “He worked to do the same with his cocktail by using various coffee liqueurs and shaking it to improve the texture.” 

Simonson writes that, by the ’90s, a new iteration of the espresso martini (now fully transformed from the vodka espresso) had emerged, one which featured coffee liqueur as one of its key ingredients. Coffee liqueur is made from coffee and some combination of sugar and alcohol, and there wasn’t a whole lot of it back in the ’80s. But there was one dominant brand: Kahlúa. 

According to its website, Kahlúa was the most popular coffee liqueur of that decade, and continued to gain name recognition in the 1990s during the espresso martini’s original heyday. “In the 90s Kahlúa became a popular drink to decorate movie scenes with. Kahlúa was featured in dozens of movies, series and songs,” the website states, most notably as one of the key ingredients in a white Russian, popularized by the 1998 movie “The Big Lebowski.” 

Kahlúa is still the #1 coffee liqueur brand, and while there are way more options available now, it reigns supreme—so much so that when I Googled “coffee liqueur,” the results were articles with titles like “The 8 Best Coffee Liqueurs That Are Not Kahlua.” But I have to imagine that with more options, bartenders are better able to design versions of the espresso martini that play with their spirit and coffee of choice. 

If you’re looking to try a Kahlúa alternative, Simonson shouts out Mr. Black, a coffee liqueur brand founded in 2013 in Australia. It’s also the most popular option I see in the modern-day espresso martini recipes I researched. 

Three: More Young People Drink Coffee

The espresso martini, in its current iteration, is a Gen Z drink, much to the confusion of Gen X drinkers who thought the cocktail was dead and gone. “It’s one thing to watch a new generation embrace classics like the Vesper or the Manhattan,” writes Kara Newman for the Wall Street Journal. “But, for Gen X, witnessing the revival of the Espresso Martini—a drink created during their lifetime—has produced mixed reactions.” 

Newman cites a few reasons why the espresso martini has found a new audience, but primarily points to the fact that coffee is being enjoyed by a younger and younger cohort, full stop. As Kim Haasarud, the owner of Garden Bar PHX in Phoenix, tells Newman, “Coffee has touched a much younger generation.” 

According to the National Coffee Association (NCA), “Coffee consumption among 18-to-24-year-olds is up 21% from January 2021 and a larger share of the age group is drinking coffee than ever before, surpassing the previous record of 50% set in September 2020.” An ingredient that might have been a deterrent to younger drinkers is now one that many are well-acquainted with, and primed to desire as a cocktail component. 

The NCA says that coffee brands are doing more to cater to young people: “As more drinks catering to the tastes of young adults are developed, it is not unlikely that we will see young Americans drinking more and more coffee.” 

The espresso martini might have once seemed like a drink for older people—for a long time, for many of us, coffee was a beverage consumed by parents and family members around a kitchen table. But given how many more young people are comfortable with the flavor of espresso, maybe it’s not so surprising that the espresso martini has found contemporary cachet.  

Four: Cold Brew? (It Has to Have Something to Do With This.)

Mr. Black Coffee Liqueur is made from cold brew: produced by leaving coffee grounds to sit in stagnant water for 12–24 hours prior to filtering, leaving behind a drink that many believe is smoother than coffee brewed hot. 

Cold brew has been around for a long time, but didn’t reach the level of cultural phenomenon until the 2010s. (I have my own stories of making cold brew and spilling grounds everywhere during the early days of its popularity.) Today, Starbucks reports that nearly three out of every four drinks it makes are cold, and I have to wonder if cold brew’s rise—and the later boom of cold coffee drinks—can claim part of the credit for the espresso martini’s current cult status.

The espresso martini, like most cocktails, is served cold. For many drinkers in the pre-cold-brew era, it was hard to conceive of coffee as being a cold beverage by default. (It’s still hard: I’m a person who will order hot coffee no matter the season.) But the more I’ve worked in coffee, the more I meet people opposite to me—who order iced drinks year round, and would never think to order a hot coffee. 

I don’t know if the espresso martini would have flourished in a pre-cold-brew world. But what I do know is that, as much as I side-eye coffee-flavored foods and drinks (I even wrote a whole article about how much I hate coffee beers, and I feel the need to mention ice cream again—a perfect food we seem to always want to mess up with coffee), I did begrudgingly have a teeny bit of an espresso martini at my favorite restaurant a few weeks back. 

Hearing my table was full of coffee folks, our server graciously gave each of us a small glass of the restaurant’s espresso martini served on draft at the end of our dinner. At first, I wanted to roll my eyes. But when I drank it, I was pleasantly surprised. It was not enough for me to make a total 180 on my espresso martini stance, but enough to recognize why people gravitate to the drink. It was creamy, light, sweet, and bitter. It was the perfect end to our meal—and maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t a totally awful drink after all.