Mexican Coffee

A warming coffee cocktail blending tequila with Kahlua and fresh hot coffee, topped with whipped cream and cinnamon.

Mexican Coffee is a warm after-dinner preparation combining tequila with Kahlúa coffee liqueur and hot coffee, applying the spirit-and-coffee format popularized by Irish Coffee to Mexico's own distilled spirit and coffee liqueur tradition. Irish Coffee was created by chef Joe Sheridan at Foynes Airport in County Limerick in 1943 and established the hot coffee-spirit-cream format as an international drink category. Kahlúa was created in Mexico in 1936, combining arabica coffee from the Veracruz highlands — one of Mexico's primary coffee-growing regions, whose altitude, rainfall, and volcanic soil produce coffee of recognized quality — with cane spirit and vanilla. Mexico's arabica coffee production, concentrated in Veracruz, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, dates to the Spanish colonial introduction of coffee cultivation in the 18th century and now supplies both domestic consumption and international export. The combination of tequila and Kahlúa in a coffee base produces a drink whose three components are all products of Mexican agriculture and production — agave-derived tequila, coffee-and-cane Kahlúa, and the hot coffee brewed from Mexican beans — giving Mexican Coffee a regional coherence that most spirit-and-coffee combinations lack. The whipped cream cap mirrors the Irish Coffee tradition while adding the dairy richness that rounds the bitter-sweet coffee combination.