The coffee tonic — espresso poured slowly over ice-cold tonic water — was born at Koppi. It's on café menus from Stockholm to Tokyo now, usually as "espresso tonic," and it has been written up by everyone from barista magazines to The New York Times. But before any of that, it was a drink we mixed for the first time in 2007 and put on the menu of our little café in Helsingborg as Kaffe & Tonic. This is the story — and the recipe.
Who invented the espresso tonic?
The idea arrived the way most good drinks do: by accident, the day after a party. In 2007, before Koppi existed, Anne Lunell and Charles Nystrand were working as baristas in Oslo. After a staff party, someone behind the bar poured leftover tonic water over ice, added a little syrup — and then, on instinct, an espresso. The bitterness of the quinine and the sweetness and acidity of the espresso locked together in a way nobody expected.
Later that same year, Anne and Charles moved home to Sweden and opened Koppi, a café and roastery in Helsingborg. They refined the drink and put it on the opening menu as Kaffe & Tonic. That menu listing is the first the world saw of it — as The New York Times put it in 2024, the beverage "first appeared in 2007 at Koppi Roasters in Helsingborg, Sweden."
The drink that took over our café
Kaffe & Tonic didn't stay a curiosity. It became the most popular cold drink we ever served — in summer, roughly 95 per cent of all iced coffees that left our bar were coffee tonics. We poured them for ten years, until the café closed in December 2017 when we decided to focus fully on the roasting.
By then the drink had long since escaped Helsingborg. Visiting baristas took it home, competitions spread it further, and by 2015 it had reached Japan, where baristas riff on it with cherry, lime and honey. In 2019 a British café chain was selling a bottled version. Today you'll find an espresso tonic on specialty coffee menus on every continent — most people drinking one have no idea it started in a small town in southern Sweden.
How to make a coffee tonic — the original way
The drink stands or falls on two things: cold, and a slow pour. You want the espresso to sit on top of the tonic in a distinct layer, not crash into it.
- A double espresso (about 40 ml), freshly pulled
- 150–200 ml good tonic water, fridge-cold
- Plenty of ice
- Optional: a small splash of simple syrup (the very first version had one)
- Optional: a slice of orange, blood orange or lemon
- Fill a tumbler to the top with ice. More ice melts slower, not faster.
- Pour in the tonic water, and the syrup if you're using it.
- Pull the espresso, then pour it gently over the back of a spoon so it settles on top of the tonic in a layer.
- Add the citrus, serve at once, and stir just before drinking.
Pour it the other way — tonic onto espresso — and you get a tall foam instead of clean layers. Some people love that. We're purists.
Which coffee works best?
A lightly roasted espresso with real fruit acidity. The quinine in tonic is bitter and dry, so the coffee needs sweetness and brightness to push back — a dark, roasty espresso just turns the drink harsh. Anything from our current espresso roasts, or actually any of our filter coffees, since they offer beautiful clarity. Over the years we've served everything from Ethiopian citrusy and floral shots to jammy berry-loaded Colombian Pink Bourbon — combined with a good quality tonic it’s liquid gold.
No espresso machine? Cold brew works beautifully — that's the variation The New York Times chose when they featured the coffee tonic in 2024. Brew any of our filter coffees as cold brew (coarse grind, 1:8 coffee to water, 16 hours in the fridge) and use a generous pour in place of the espresso.
Common questions
Is there alcohol in an espresso tonic?
No — tonic water is just carbonated water with quinine and a little sugar. The drink only looks like a cocktail. It also makes a brilliant base for one, but that's another article.
What does it taste like?
Bittersweet and sparkling: the quinine's dry bitterness up front, then the espresso's fruit and sweetness underneath. As the ice melts it opens up, the way a good highball does. If you find plain iced coffee dull, this is its sharper, more interesting sibling.
Coffee tonic or espresso tonic — which is the right name?
Both are used everywhere now. We called it Kaffe & Tonic in 2007, which translates to coffee tonic — so that's the name we're sticking with.
Curious about how we roast the coffee that goes into it? Read why we roast light, or start with the basics: what is specialty coffee? And if you make one at home, tag us — after nineteen years we still don't tire of seeing that layered pour.
