Café Medina in Vancouver has become an early torch bearer of a new coffee trend that at first invites skepticism: mixing coffee and tonic. Medina’s new Coffee Tonic is an artisan coffee soda, made in-house, that combines cold carbonated coffee with a touch of the bitter quinine that is most often used as a cocktail mixer.
The offering comes with Medina’s move to a new space in the Library District after six years as a Crosstown favorite. The café is already well-known as a destination for brunch, cocktails and coffee alike, and alongside a 10-seat bar the new space incorporates an eight-seat coffee bar, minty blue La Marzocco FB/80 espresso machine and a full menu of coffee to go.
“The Coffee Tonic is a bitter and fizzy quinine soda with the sweetness of 49th Parallel Old School Espresso, and Central American-inspired Bittered Sling Moondog Bitters—both of which are also local Vancouver companies,” says Alana Tees, communications associate for Medina.
Though cities from Stockholm to Tokyo have been exploring the idea of espresso and tonic for longer, it reached North America by way of San Francisco earlier this year. There, Kevin Bohlin of Saint Frank Coffee tried eight types of tonic with various coffees before arriving at a best match: Central American beans and Fever Tree tonic water. The combination is counter-intuitive—after all, British drinking quinine tinctures to avoid malaria in India in the late 1800s only mixed it with other things (like gin) to make the bitter medicine palatable. Yet a light touch of quinine in fact plays up the flavors in certain espressos, especially those with fruity or floral notes and bright acidity of their own.
The idea of adding carbonation isn’t entirely novel either. Coffee sodas are patchily available at some regional cafés, often imported from places like Italy but also made by American producers like Manhattan Special in Brooklyn. Vancouverite Melody Fury just helped launch Coffer, “the world’s first naturally carbonated cold brew coffee,” in Austin, Texas. And many people don’t know that Starbucks head honcho Howard Shultz set his sights on producing a Starbucks bottled coffee soda in the 1990s. The product, called Mazagran, was one of his most spectacular business flops.
Medina’s combination promises to turn out otherwise, thanks to an already strong in-house artisanal soda program that produces offerings like Bergamot + Buttermilk Cream Soda and Rosehip + Jaffa “Orange Crush,” too. All are tasty, but if you’re in the neighborhood, stop in and give the Coffee Tonic a try.
