a letter love to iced beverages
may your latte always be iced and your lid always flat
Apologies for the delay in posting recently, sometimes the well is empty no matter how many times you visit, thank you for your patience.
~
Walking to purchase a decaf iced latte is an integral part of my Friday routine. What would life be without it? Who would I be without it? Sure, I could make it in my own kitchen - I have a freezer, I have instant coffee, I have milk, but where’s the fun in that? Swirling a chilled beverage and hearing the ice lightly clang as I amble home after someone has poured the perfect shot through a La Marzocco machine is what I was born for.
I extend this penchant for iced lattes to matcha, drinks at the cinema and the Karma range at Leon (which I’m coincidentally sipping through a fun, striped straw right now). On occasion, I find that people can be quite stingy with ice which is why I derive so much excitement from the Freestyle machines at Vue. A small mixed popcorn beverage combo will set me back £8,000,000 but can you put a price on happiness? The only answer is no. I’m the one who pushes the ice lever until the cup is almost full then I load the rest up with sweet, sweet Coca-Cola (Diet Coke and Coke Cero have no place in my heart and I will die on that hill).
(And yes, I eat the ice at the end).
While on a bus through Central the other day, I saw a girl sitting outside Blank Street double parking an iced americano (in hand) and an iced matcha latte (balanced beside her on the bench). Maybe the second untouched and unmistakably green drink was for a friend who had yet to arrive, but I like to think that both were for her after deciding she had room in her heart for two. Nowadays we wouldn’t bat an eye at someone hoarding several beverages in front of them, especially after the three-drink theory gained popularity on TikTok, awakening us all to the importance of having liquid refreshments close by for necessary hydration, energy and fun. I’m usually stacking a cup of tea, glass of orange juice (no bits) and glass of water (which I’ll never finish) in the morning, sampling each at a snail’s pace until my hot drink has gone cold because I forgot about it.
Despite the sudden and sharp seasonal shift in the UK weather, my heart still holds onto the cold assurance of adding ice to my drink. I don’t want to wait for it to cool down, I don’t want to burn my tongue, I want the crisp taste of ice forever. My best friend and I got a glimpse into the potential for iced coffee all year round during our trip to Seoul last October (take a shot every time I mention Korea throughout my newsletters) where iced americanos (or shortened simply to AA / 아아 for efficiency when ordering) reign supreme. Coffee shops were open all hours, putting to shame the early closing times of cafes comparatively in London. I’ll also never forget the excitement of plucking a pre-prepared cup of ice from the cooler at 7/11 and tipping in a bag of coffee just like @annainseoul on TikTok. Anahit Aharonyan wrote a piece for Photobook Magazine titled ‘How I Fell in Love with Iced Americanos in South Korea’ where she said “The cafes are usually aesthetic. I would rather meet people in aesthetic places” when asked about why she thought Korea had so many coffee shops.
I’ve never really quizzed myself on where the accelerated desire to visit the most edgy coffee shops I could find came from. I’m not a huge caffeine drinker which feels like something ‘death before decaf’ enthusiasts would find perplexing. Having grown up drinking Costa hot chocolate with three wobbly marshmallows floating in it, or thinking I was so mature ordering a mocha from Cafe Nero, nowadays the choice of coffee shops is mind-boggling with competitors sitting side by side and across the street from one another.
Before my TikTok became what it is now, I used to do these random rating videos of different iced decaf lattes with oat milk I’d wandered off on my own to try. Walking around East London, I reviewed drinks based on four criteria: the cost, whether I got a flat or domed lid and the taste before assigning a score out of 5. Iced lattes have been a long-standing favourite of mine but it can often be a struggle to find a good one. Watching the videos back, I never put where some of the drinks were from (maybe I didn’t want to name and shame) but a reason why I ranked some drinks higher than others boiled down to the taste, yes, but more importantly the aesthetic of how drinking an iced latte made/makes me feel.
It’s different to when you get a coffee in an opaque, insulated cup to go, I can’t see what’s going on, the careful latte art has sloshed against the lid and it’s all ruined. However, with my iced latte, I get to watch the espresso shot blend with the milk or see the layers of the drink swirl together. I want other people to know what I’m drinking, and where I’ve been. Perhaps they’ll think “Hey, that girl’s iced latte looks delicious I want one too”.
The Nitro Bar - a quote-unquote cool, viral coffee shop that capitalised on the ‘what would you make me?’ / ‘weird drink orders’ trends, often have me dreaming of what their beverages taste like. Though enjoying their content from the other side of the pond, and feeling encouraged to open my own highly aesthetic coffee shop someday, a few users have left mixed reviews on whether or not the drinks are truly good.
This makes me wonder about style over substance in the coffee world - because The Nitro Bar’s lattes look spectacular but is everything … just… catered … towards content (in short, yes it is - something something about if a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound? If an iced drink is made but no one is around to photograph it, did it really ever truly exist?). A brand who’ve captured the market with highly aesthetic celebrity-endorsed olc drinks is Erewhon, who despite selling healthy liquid beverages and soft serves for eyewatering prices, do so in a way that gives consumers a slice of a luxury lifestyle… now read that sentence back.
When visiting my parents last week, I walked to the local cafe (in a pair of wellies) when the morning fog was still rolling in off the fields. It was cold but not cold and I was the first customer of the day, ordering an iced latte before the cakes were even on display to be sold. “You ordered an iced latte in this weather?” my brother asked me once I got home, “yes, yes I did” was my reply.
Until the next,
Lory x