Coffee with chocolate notes

Worth clarifying because it causes confusion: a coffee with cocoa notes contains no chocolate and no flavourings.

What happens is that roasting generates hundreds of aromatic compounds, and some are the same ones present in cocoa. It makes sense: coffee and cacao are both fermented, roasted seeds, so they share a chemical family.

Your brain recognises those compounds and files them where it can. That's why these are descriptions, not ingredients.

From the roast, above all. The Maillard reactions and caramelisation that happen between first and second crack are what generate cocoa, nuts and caramel. A medium or medium-dark roast is where that profile expresses best.

From the origin, partly. Washed Central American and Colombian coffees at medium roast lean that way easily, as do many Brazilians.

From the blend. A well-built blend can pursue that profile deliberately, combining coffees that bring body with others that bring sweetness. We explain it in single origin versus blend.

A delicate, floral coffee disappears under 150 ml of milk. One with body and cocoa notes doesn't: the milk rounds off the bitterness and the profile is still there.

That's why espresso blends are almost always built in this direction, and why a cortado with a coffee like this works better than with a light roast single origin.

It's also the profile that pairs best with dark chocolate and spiced baking, as we cover in the pairing guide.

This is the one that fits: a medium-dark blend with dark chocolate, nuts and liquorice, built to give body and a stable crema in espresso and to hold up against milk.

It comes as whole bean, ground for espresso and in Nespresso® compatible capsules — the same coffee in all three formats, the only difference being when it gets ground.