If, like me, you occasionally revisit Nora Ephron\u2019s 1998 rom-com classic You\u2019ve Got Mail<\/em>, you may recall the iconic scene at a Starbucks in New York City\u2019s West Village. Bookstore owner Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan), in a masterfully layered pinafore and turtleneck, smiles as she awaits her soon-to-be-viral \u201890s order of a tall, skim, caramel macchiato. She\u2019s recalling an email from Joe Fox, her AOL crush and unwitting rival played by Tom Hanks.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee,\u201d Fox\u2019s voiceover proclaims. \u201c…So people who don\u2019t know what the hell they\u2019re doing or who on earth they are, can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall! Decaf! Cappuccino!\u201d<\/p>\n This scene that so cleverly encapsulates the American consumer would not only cement the rise of coffee\u2019s second wave (through re-energized cafe culture at places like Starbucks and Peet\u2019s Coffee), but also that of the flavored caffe latte, which has since spawned such viral progeny as eggnog, peppermint mocha, and, of course, pumpkin spice.<\/p>\n At once beloved and maligned, the distinctly American practice of doctoring espresso with flavored syrups and copious amounts of steamed milk purportedly dates back to San Francisco\u2019s North Beach neighborhood in the early 1980s. Per San Francisco-based syrup maker Torani, a retired coffee industry veteran named LC \u201cBrandy\u201d Brandenburg walked into North Beach’s Caffe Trieste in 1982 and glimpsed the Torani flavored syrup bottles lining the back bar. He asked owner and friend Giovanni \u201cPapa Gianni\u201d Giotta if he could take a few home to Portland, Ore., where he had an espresso machine. He started experimenting until he\u2019d concocted the first flavored latte out of steamed milk, espresso, and vanilla and orange syrups, which he called the Fantasia.<\/p>\n \u201cHe picked up the phone and called Harry Lucheta [son-in-law of Torani\u2019s founders Ezilda and Rinaldo Torre], who was running the company at that time,\u201d says Melanie Dulbecco, Torani\u2019s CEO. \u201cHe said, \u2018I think I figured something out here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n On a handshake deal, Lucheta sent Brandenburg back to Portland with 10 cases and an agreed-upon commission to start spreading the flavored latte gospel to local roasters and cafe owners. Dulbecco, who started at Torani in 1991 and was mentored by Brandenburg and Lucheta, says it was tough going to sell to cafes in those early days.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople\u2019s initial reaction was, \u2018You want to do what to your espresso?\u2019\u201d says Dulbecco. \u201cUp to that point what was being served in cafes were cappuccinos or straight espresso.\u201d<\/p>\n The practice of flavoring coffee dates back centuries to the Middle Eastern spice trade when people started brewing coffee with cardamom or cinnamon, or plopping dried fruit pieces into their cups as a flavor complement. To this day, authentic Arabic and Turkish coffees<\/a> are often brewed with cardamom. In Yemen, coffee beans are sometimes mixed with a heady blend of dried ginger, cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon.<\/p>\n Likewise, Italians have long been \u201ccorrecting\u201d their espresso with liqueurs. The marocchino, which originated in Piedmont, consists of a shot of espresso blended with cocoa and milk froth. It\u2019s worth noting that these are fastidiously considered desserts, bordering on sin if ordered before lunchtime\u2014not unlike Italians\u2019 strictness about cappuccinos being solely a morning beverage.<\/p>\n Owing to the influx of Italians to North Beach in the early 1900s, flavored syrups have been part of American cafe culture since the \u201820s. There, the San Francisco-native Torre set up shop producing Torani’s syrups, including tamarindo, orgeat, anisette, grenadine and lemon, which were mostly bound for Italian sodas, though occasionally flavored coffees. Grenadine would remain Torani\u2019s most popular flavor until 1990.<\/p>\n However, Brandenburg\u2019s latte was purportedly more inspired by the flavored coffees he started seeing on grocery shelves in the 1970s. Popularized by Chicago-based Gloria Jean\u2019s Coffee, which debuted in 1979, flavored coffee usually involves mixing flavor compounds with a solvent<\/a> like propylene glycol to attach the flavor chemicals to the beans. The flavor syrup is poured over coffee beans after the roast and agitated to coat them evenly.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Brandy saw was that consumers were looking for this coffee with flavors adhered to the beans, which was not a great experience,\u201d Dulbecco says. \u201cThe point is, people still wanted it. That\u2019s what gave him the idea of doing it in an elevated way. Part of the trick to growing this category was the addition of milk. Initially some people were finding coffee bitter, even with the flavorings. This was a way in.\u201d<\/p>\n By the \u201880s, Torani shifted its entire business to focusing on cafes. It added coffee-friendly flavors like vanilla, chocolate, white chocolate, and caramel and put together suggested menus with flavor syrups intended to blend with\u2014not overpower\u2014coffee. Coffee shops started getting on board, too. In October 1986, at the behest of then-new Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to create more seasonal coffee drinks, an employee at Seattle\u2019s Columbia Tower Starbucks named Dave Olsen invented the eggnog latte<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the early 1990s, just as Starbucks and Peet\u2019s were starting to experiment with different flavored syrups, Bourge, France-based syrup maker Monin established a presence in America with its vanilla, caramel, and hazelnut syrups. Those earliest flavors remain three of Monin\u2019s best-selling to this day, says Angela Thompson, beverage innovation director.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to overstate how instrumental Starbucks was to the flavored latte\u2019s rise. The pumpkin pie latte, aka the precursor to pumpkin spice, had already appeared at a few coffee shops when a Starbucks product manager presented a prototype<\/a> to the R&D team at the company\u2019s headquarters in 2003. The drink would spark an 11 percent jump in sales the following year and go on to be the company\u2019s best-selling seasonal beverage of all time. It\u2019s now available in 50 countries worldwide, and as of 2019, CNBC reported<\/a> that an estimated 424 million had been sold. Meanwhile, spin-off iterations continue sprouting on grocery shelves and backbars, and pumpkin spice season creeps up and up like a slow-moving pumpkin-pie-filling spill, to the point where Torani now has to ensure it has stock of pumpkin spice syrup as early as July.<\/p>\n Of course, not everyone is so keen to debase their espressos with pumpkin spice or any other flavoring for a whole litany of reasons\u2014some of which sprung out of the very same cafe culture that Starbucks helped usher in.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s different kinds of thumbing your nose when it comes to coffee,\u201d says Merry \u201cCorky\u201d White, a professor of anthropology at Boston University, who specializes in food and coffee. \u201cOne is, why mess up a good cup of coffee? Another, which is a big thing in Massachusetts, is Starbucks versus Dunkin\u2019 Donuts, or more broadly, this idea of the fake elite versus the fake working class. I think the latte falls into the snob category perhaps in that scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n The rise of specialty coffee and its affiliation with \u201crarified connoisseurship\u201d arguably began in Berkeley in the 1960s, when Alfred Peet opened his first cafe using high-quality beans and manually calibrated roasting to brew a sweeter, less bitter cup. Until then, coffee status was less about the lousy swill in your cup than the place, with its sticky tables and din of philosophical chatter in a haze of cigarette smoke. \u201cNow the coffee itself began to have the power to confer some kind of status on the drinker,\u201d White says. This would only grow, later taking the form of backlash against the cheap, flavored coffees becoming popular at supermarkets.<\/p>\n As cafe culture evolved and eventually spilled into the mass market, so did the flavored latte\u2014irking purists across the fake elite-to-working class spectrum. Whether or not you think a flat white belongs in the same category as a $6 single-origin El Salvadoran pour-over and an iced vanilla latte with an extra pump, all three use language that carries with it some cache, White says.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s another part of the sophistication\u2014which I don\u2019t think is real sophistication\u2014but it\u2019s the idea that expressing yourself requires this coffee language,\u201d White says. \u201cFor Starbucks it\u2019s \u2018grande, tall, venti\u2019\u2014things they completely invented\u2014but it sounds exciting to say it in a foreign language.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s enough to make one wonder what might be the coffee-language currency of a modern-day Kathleen Kelly, dogged owner of an endangered independent bookstore with her earnest, whimsical style and unwavering ethical compass. Would she still attach her name to a Starbucks tall skim caramel macchiato all these years later?<\/p>\n Then again, a defining sense of self averages $5 or more these days, so I suspect she\u2019d probably just drink what she likes.<\/p>\n
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\nWhat’s your favorite flavored latte order? Tell us in the comments!<\/em>
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