Grada brings together coffee and spirits scene

A brand new coffee liqueur has hit Australians shelves, ready to pick up from where coffee culture stops for the afternoon. Grada 01 Single Origin is the brand’s first launch, sourced from single-origin farms in Brazil and made in Melbourne.

Grada head of coffee, Clara Santaera, said getting coffee right in spirit isn’t about one thing, it’s about three.

“You need exceptional green coffee, a precise roast, and a flawless extraction,” said Santaera.

“Miss even one, and you lose it all. You can start with an incredible bean and ruin it in the roaster, or nail the roast and destroy it in extraction. Every stage has to work in harmony.”

Made using a hot-extraction, full-immersion process, Grada 01 is described as a silky-bodied liqueur with a buttery mouthfeel, unfolding layers of chocolate brownie, roasted hazelnut, and burnt caramel, with aromas of black cherry and a gentle plum-like acidity.

Coffee is the third most consumed beverage on earth, yet it represents less than 0.5 per cent of liquor sales. Grada co-founder, Roscoe Power, said this offered an astonishing opportunity to build a broader bridge between the world’s obsession with coffee and the liquor industry.

“Most coffee liqueurs are built backwards – liquor first, coffee second,” said Power.

“We started with specialty-grade coffee and built everything else around it. The goal was simple: to create something specialty coffee lovers and professionals could be proud of.”

Grada is now available online at grada.au and in Dan Murphy’s stores around the country for RRP $49.99.