Galliano Hot Shot

A Scandinavian layered shot of Galliano, hot coffee, and lightly whipped cream — cozy, indulgent, and deceptively simple.

The Galliano Hot Shot traces to a coffee-drink competition held in 1988 at the Swedish trade fair grounds, part of the Swedish Championships in long drinks organized by Sveriges Bartenders Gille (the Swedish Bartenders Guild), with a side competition sponsored by the coffee company Lofbergs Lila. Bartender Bosse Bergstrom entered a simple layered shot -- coffee topped with Anisette -- that he originally called just "Hot Shot"; he placed second, but his creation quickly took on a life of its own in Swedish bars afterward. (Bergstrom has confirmed the year as 1988 in interviews, correcting a "1987" date that circulates widely, including on Galliano's own marketing materials.) Anisette was soon replaced with Galliano -- the tall-bottled Italian herbal liqueur produced in Livorno -- which barely existed in the Swedish market at the time, and the Galliano version became the one that spread commercially. The drink is a layered preparation: hot coffee poured over the Galliano, topped with whipped cream, served with the instruction to drink it all in one sip without mixing so the layers hit separately. Galliano's anise and vanilla aromatics interact with the hot coffee in a concentrated, intensely flavored shot. The drink became so popular in Sweden that it effectively transformed the country's relationship with Galliano: Swedish sales of the liqueur reportedly increased by roughly 750 percent over five years following the Hot Shot's spread through Swedish bars and nightlife in the late 1980s and through the 1990s, according to Bergstrom's own account. The Swedish nightlife community embraced the Hot Shot so completely that Sweden now celebrates a National Hot Shot Day each November. Galliano itself was created in 1896 by Arturo Vaccari in Livorno, Italy, named for Major Giuseppe Galliano -- an Italian military officer celebrated for his 44-day defense of Fort Enda Jesus in Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) against a vastly larger force during the First Italo-Ethiopian War. Galliano was promoted and decorated for the defense, but was killed weeks later at the Battle of Adwa in March 1896, the same year Vaccari's liqueur launched bearing his name.