Irish Coffee

is one of the world’s most popular and lasting drinks, equally famous as a morning cocktail, a hot cocktail, and a coffee cocktail. It is a relatively simple drink, made of hot coffee, sugar or simple syrup, and Irish whisky, topped with a head of whipped cream, but it requires some brio and dexterity to construct properly. It was created in late 1944 or early 1945 at the flying boat station at Foynes, Ireland, when chef Joe Sheridan (1909–1962) was asked to come up with something special with which to greet a group of dignitaries touring the facilities there and at the new airport being built across the Shannon. Ireland had reached an agreement with the American Civil Aviation Board that all American commercial air traffic to and from Europe would stop at the new facility. (The competing story that it was invented at the Dolphin Hotel in Dublin is unsupported, although it should be noted that Sheridan came to Foynes from there.)

Insert-Figure ID="acref-9780199311132-e-344-figureGroup-40"?

By 1947, Sheridan’s “Gaelic Coffee,” as it was originally known, was being offered to all travelers deplaning at Shannon. The drink got a strong endorsement from the American journalist Temple Fielding’s pioneering guidebooks to postwar European travel and began appearing at bars here and there across America.

In 1953, travel writer Stanton Delaplane, who had had the drink at Shannon, brought it to Jack Koeppler (1909–1970), the owner of the Buena Vista Café in San Francisco, and they managed to reverse-engineer it. Although the Buena Vista wasn’t the first to introduce the drink to the United States, the concoction rapidly became an institution there—by 1955, the bar was going through thirty-six bottles of Irish whisky a day—and thereafter spread in renown.With fame came adulteration: syrup replaced the original sugar cubes; glasses got bigger (the original footed glass goblet held a restrained 180 ml), which meant the drink was drowned in coffee. Canned whipped cream replaced the fresh. Sometimes it was green. Fortunately, the original formula has seen something of a resurgence in recent years, with bars such as New York’s famous Dead Rabbit priding themselves on making the drink the way Sheridan did.

*Recipe: Whip 30 ml heavy cream in a cold mixing bowl until it doubles in volume. Warm a 180-ml Irish coffee glass or mug with hot water, then drain. Put 2 sugar cubes (preferably brown or demerara) in warmed glass, then 45 ml Irish whisky and 75 ml fresh, hot coffee. Stir. Gently spoon cream onto the top of the drink.

See also whisky, Irish.

“Airport Inspected.” Dublin Evening Press, September 23, 1944, 3.

Delaplane, Stanton. “A Postcard from Stan Delaplane.” Reno Journal-gazette, March 17, 1955, 4.

Fielding, Temple. Fielding’s New Travel Guide to Europe. New York: William Sloane, 1948.

“U.S. Airlines Pact with Eire.” Dundee (Scotland) Evening Telegraph, February 2, 1945, 2.

Wondrich, David. “The Five Most Influential Irish Bars in America.” Daily Beast, March 11, 2019, https://www.thedailybeast.com/for-st-patricks-day-the-five-most-influential-irish-bars-in-america (accessed February 17, 2021).

By: Robert Simonson and David Wondrich

!Irish Coffee Primary Image
Marilyn Monroe sips an Irish Coffee at Shannon Airport as Arthur Miller ponders following suit, November, 1956. Source: Courtesy of Shannon Airport.
!Irish Coffee Primary Image
The three massive, 80,000-liter pot stills added to Irish Distillers’ Midleton distillery in 2013. Source: Courtesy of Irish Distillers Ltd.*See also whisky, Irish.