Ona Coffee has announced its latest special release of coffee blends, the Winter Warmer series.

The three blends have each been roasted for a different style of preparation, and aim to recreate the flavour profile of a famous cocktail or alcoholic drink. The series includes the Hot Toddy blend for espresso, Irish Coffee blend for milk-based coffees, and the Mulled Wine blend for filter coffee.

Danny Wilson, Head Roaster of Ona Coffee, says that the inspiration for the Winter Warmers came from the success of previous special releases.

“Over the past year and a half, we’ve been experimenting a lot more with special releases such as this, trying to recreate flavours that are well known,” he says.

“Creating a blend that tastes like something recognisable and naming it as such allows the consumer to be able to relate to the diverse flavours of coffee.”

Each of the Winter Warmers blends uses experimentally-processed coffees to recreate these classic cocktail flavours, including carbonic maceration coffees from Panama, Colombia, and Ethiopia.

“The coffees we’ve used in these blends are the result of years of research and development, as well as collaboration between Ona Coffee, Project Origin, and producers around the world,” Danny says.

“Using them has allowed us to recreate the power and intensity of these classic cocktail flavours, and express them through an alcohol-free coffee.”

Danny is no stranger to the world of cocktails – he has won Australia’s largest coffee cocktail competition, the Australian Coffee in Good Spirits Championship, on two occasions. In 2018, he also placed third in the world championship in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

If you’re feeling inspired to make some cocktails, the Ona Coffee team has thought of that too. In addition to creating these blends, Danny has also provided video and written recipes for coffee-based cocktails, each using one of the Winter Warmers coffee blends.

‘We wanted to enable people to take that next step with coffee and create something themselves that wasn’t just an espresso or a filter,” Danny says.

“Despite having some common approaches, the coffee and cocktail worlds have a lot to offer each other. We want people to have fun with these blends – they can make a coffee, make a cocktail, or both.”

The Winter Warmers blends will be available from 5 July at www.onacoffee.com.au/shop