The World’s First Clear Coffee Liqueur Redefines Luxury Drinking

In Bordeaux, innovation is never loud. This is a city where taste is inherited, precision is expected, and restraint is a form of credibility.

So when a spirit emerges from the region quietly dismantling the conventions of coffee liqueur, it does so without spectacle, and all the more convincingly for it.

The spirit in question is Brunette Clear, the world’s first transparent coffee liqueur, created by Bordeaux Distilling Company. Clear in appearance yet unexpectedly layered in flavour, it feels less like a novelty and more like a natural evolution, coffee, distilled for a lighter, more design-conscious era of luxury drinking.

How Bordeaux Distilling Company Created the World’s First Clear Coffee Liqueur

Founded in 2018, Bordeaux Distilling Company has built its reputation quietly, producing a focused portfolio of gin, rum, whisky and liqueurs from its base in southwest France.

Its latest release, Brunette Clear Coffee Liqueur, is its most technically ambitious to date, and one that fundamentally rethinks how coffee liqueur is made.

Completely transparent and 100 percent organic, Brunette Clear is not achieved through filtration or colour removal, nor does it follow the cristalino-style process used in tequila. Instead, clarity is built into the spirit from the very beginning.

The distillery’s approach centres on sustainability and ingredient efficiency. Rather than relying solely on roasted coffee beans, the team chose to work with coffee by-products typically discarded during production, specifically coffee blossom and cascara, the dried husks of coffee cherries. These elements contribute aromatic, floral and tea-like notes while significantly reducing waste.

Each ingredient is handled separately. Coffee blossom and cascara are individually macerated in a neutral wheat-based grain spirit for two weeks, then distilled at low temperatures to preserve their delicate profiles. These two distillates are then blended with a third clear spirit, itself produced by distilling the residual coffee material left over from Bordeaux Distilling Company’s original Brunette Coffee Liqueur — the opaque predecessor to Brunette Clear.

The final blend is rested for six months before bottling at 22 percent ABV. No colouring. No additives. No post-production manipulation.

“Passionate about innovation and sustainability, we’re incredibly proud that Brunette Clear not only highlights the issue of waste, but also expands the functionality of coffee liqueurs,” says Arnaud Chevalier of Bordeaux Distilling Company. “It’s already being used by one of the world’s leading bars, Little Red Door in Paris, and we’re excited to see how the UK’s mixology scene embraces it.”

While Brunette Clear can be enjoyed neat or over ice, it has been developed with cocktail creation firmly in mind. Its crystal clarity allows coffee flavour to be introduced without altering colour — enabling minimalist serves such as a transparent espresso martini, as well as more subtle integrations into modern cocktails.

It is a spirit defined less by novelty than by intention, one that reflects a broader shift in luxury drinking toward precision, sustainability and quiet innovation.

https://bordeauxdistilling.co/en