How to Prepare Your CoffeeCaffè Leccese
In the Salento the summer coffee is poured hot onto ice that is already sitting in almond milk — never chilled in a fridge first, never sweetened with sugar. The almond does the sweetening, and it is the local almond milk, thick and sugared, that Puglia has been making for centuries. The order matters: ice and almond milk go into the low glass, the espresso lands on top, one stir, drink it before the ice thins it. Locals mostly call it caffè in ghiaccio con latte di mandorla; caffè leccese is the name that travelled. The family of the Lecce roaster Antonio Quarta, who sold ice by cart in the city after the war, claims the invention.
Ratio breakdown
Ingredients run from the top of the cup to the bottom; the last item is the bottom layer. Values are normalized to a true 100% stack.
What you need
- 2–3 large cubes, made with filtered waterIce
- ~40 ml sweetened latte di mandorla — or 10–20 ml almond syrupAlmond milk
- 1 espresso (~50 ml), freshly pulled or moka-brewedCoffee
Method notes
- Grind
- Fine — espresso grind, or moka-fine if you brew it on the stove
- Water temperature
- Espresso hot, poured straight onto cold ice
- Total time
- 3 min
Steps
Put the ice in a low glass and pour the almond milk over it
The almond milk goes in before the coffee so it is already cold when the espresso arrives, which is what stops the hot shot melting everything at once. Sources describe the measure two ways — about forty millilitres of sweetened almond milk, or simply filling the glass to the height of one finger.
Use large cubes made with filtered or bottled water
The ice is an ingredient here, not a cooling device, and it ends up in your mouth. Large cubes with no air pockets melt slowly and keep the drink from turning into watery coffee halfway down; cloudy freezer ice carries the taste of whatever else is in the freezer.
Pull the espresso and pour it in hot
The whole method is hot coffee meeting ice, not coffee that was cooled beforehand. The thermal shock is what gives the drink its texture, and a shot that has been sitting goes flat and sour before it ever reaches the glass.
Stir once and drink it straight away
One turn of a teaspoon marries the almond and the coffee; any longer and the ice has done too much. This is not a drink to carry around — every Salento source says the same thing, that it is made and drunk on the spot.
Tips
- No sugar — the almond milk is already sweet, and adding sugar on top is the giveaway that someone has made it from unsweetened almond drink.
- If you only have unsweetened almond drink, use more of it — around 50–60 ml — and a teaspoon of sugar, which is the documented substitute rather than a shortcut.
- Some bars aerate the almond milk with the steam wand first, which gives a creamier glass; it is a local preference, not the baseline recipe.
- Order it with a pasticciotto, the Salento's custard-filled pastry — the two are a standard pairing for breakfast, mid-afternoon or an aperitivo hour.
Common mistakes
- Chilling the espresso before it goes in — the drink is defined by hot coffee hitting cold ice; a pre-cooled shot makes a different, duller drink.
- Small or hollow ice cubes — they collapse in seconds and leave you with diluted coffee, which is exactly what the tradition was invented to avoid.
- Making it in advance — there is no version of this that survives being left standing; it is built in the glass and drunk immediately.
- Reaching for a dairy milk or a cream — the almond is the point, and it is what distinguishes this from every other iced espresso in Italy.
FAQ
Is it caffè leccese or caffè in ghiaccio?
Both names are in use and the argument is a real one in Lecce. Locals overwhelmingly ask for caffè in ghiaccio, adding con latte di mandorla if they want the almond; caffè leccese is the name that spread through menus, tourism and food writing. Antonio Quarta, of the Lecce roastery his family has run since just after the war, has publicly argued for caffè leccese on the grounds that his grandfather both invented the drink and gave it that name.
Who invented it?
The Quarta family's account is the one on the record: Antonio Quarta senior ran an ice works and sold ice by cart around Lecce in the years after the Second World War, and rather than serve a coffee cooled in a fridge he served a hot one poured over crushed ice. Almond milk was added in the Salento afterwards, as the sweetener in place of sugar. It is a family claim reported by the local press rather than an independently documented invention, and no source disputes it.
How is it different from a caffè shakerato or a mazagran?
A shakerato is espresso shaken violently with ice and strained, so the ice never reaches the glass and the signature is foam. A Portuguese mazagran is espresso over ice cut with lemon. The caffè leccese keeps the ice in the glass, adds no acidity and no shake, and is sweetened by almond milk rather than by sugar — the almond is the whole regional signature.
What kind of almond milk should I use?
The Salento kind: a thick, sweetened almond concentrate, ideally from Puglia, not the unsweetened almond drink sold as a dairy substitute. Bars often use an almond syrup instead, which is why the published quantities in Italian recipes swing between about ten millilitres of syrup and forty of almond milk — they are two different products doing the same job.
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