A shaken carajillo in a small coupe, pale tan foam on top, a few flakes of sea salt scattered on the surface, on a dark wood bar

The Carajillo Has a Dictionary Entry but No Birthday

September 15, 2026

The Pantry Pulse, 15 September 2026.

Updated 28 September 2026: rewritten and re-sourced.

The carajillo is coffee with a shot of strong spirit in it, served hot at Spanish bars and iced and shaken across Mexico and, by Licor 43's account, increasingly in the United States. The Spanish Academy's dictionary defines it and explains where the word comes from, but none of the nine sources below dates or places the first one. Separating the documented carajillo from the storied one also turns up an older, hotter way to make it, with the sugar warmed in the spirit.

What the record says

The Diccionario de la lengua española of the Real Academia Española defines the carajillo as hot coffee mixed with a high-proof alcoholic drink. It derives the word from carajo plus the diminutive suffix -illo. The dictionary's etymology does not pass through coraje, courage, the word at the centre of the Cuba origin story. The Catalan food historian Jaume Fàbrega notes that some read the name as an allusion to the male organ, and recalls that the English translator of his Traditional Catalan Cooking added a schoolyard joke to that effect to the recipe's definition.

Two Spanish producers still name the drink on their own pages. Anís del Mono, a registered brand of Grupo Osborne, presents its range as including the perfect carajillo for morning or afternoon. Familia Torres describes its Torres 5 brandy as suited to mixing with coffee in the classic carajillo style, and traces the brandy's legacy to 1928, when Juan Torres began distilling Penedès grapes.

The iced carajillo that Licor 43's maker promotes in the United States is a later branch. Licor 43 was created in 1946 by the siblings Diego, Ángel and Josefina Zamora, according to the Mexican business magazine Expansión, and its maker says it is produced in Cartagena from a family recipe of 43 ingredients, at 31 percent alcohol. By the company's own account, it began promoting the carajillo in Mexico in the early 2000s as espresso and Licor 43 over ice. Julián Fernández, Zamora Company's global marketing and innovation director for spirits, told Expansión that bartenders, not the brand, invented the shaken version about twelve years later, and that company studies put shaken carajillos at 70 to 80 percent of carajillo drinking in Mexico.

The brand's recipe page calls the Carajillo 43 its most popular drink in Mexico: 50 ml of Licor 43 shaken with a hot espresso and ice, strained over fresh ice. Zamora launched a bottled Carajillo 43 in Mexico in March 2021 and says it moved more than 240,000 units in under eight months. These are the company's own figures.

The Guadalajara newspaper El Informador gives a different sequence, placing Licor 43's hold on the drink in the 1990s, when bars served coffee with milk and a small glass of the liqueur on the side, before the two were mixed and then iced.

The legends, labelled as legends

Two origin stories account for the name. The first has Spanish soldiers in Cuba, then a colony, at the end of the nineteenth century, drinking coffee with rum before battle for corajillo, a little courage. El Informador repeats it while saying in the same breath that the drink's origin is not clear.

The second is from Barcelona: workers building the 1929 International Exhibition supposedly ordered a coffee and a glass with the phrase que ara guillo, roughly "because I'm off now". Fàbrega writes that witnesses told him the workers used the expression, yet he files the etymology as false and thinks it traces to the writer Josep M. Espinàs.

Fàbrega's own reading is hedged. The drink seems to him to have a Catalan origin, perhaps in Barcelona and tied to dock workers, and he finds a link to the cremat of Costa Brava fishermen, a coffee drink with rum or cane spirit, fairly plausible.

None of these sources establishes when or where the first carajillo was made, or when the word first appeared in print. Fàbrega's account holds two dated markers. A Licor Carajillo has been made at the Juan Segarra distillery in Xert since the 1920s. The Catalan cousin cigaló, which originally meant a small glass of liqueur, is documented from at least 1906, in the writing of Emili Vilanova.

Record, brand account, legend: a sorted timeline

When	What	Status	Source
Unknown	First carajillo made; first printed use of the word	Unknown	No source dates either
Late 19th century	Spanish soldiers in Cuba drink coffee with rum for "corajillo"	Legend	El Informador
By 1906	Cigaló documented, first meaning a small glass of liqueur	Record, as reported by Fàbrega	El Temps
1920s	Juan Segarra distillery in Xert bottles a Licor Carajillo	Reported by Fàbrega	El Temps
1928	Juan Torres begins distilling Penedès grapes	Producer account	Familia Torres
1929	Exhibition workers coin "que ara guillo"	Legend; Fàbrega calls it a false etymology	El Temps
1946	Licor 43 created by Diego, Ángel and Josefina Zamora	Reported	Expansión
1990s	Licor 43 served beside coffee in Mexico, then mixed, then iced	Newspaper account	El Informador
Early 2000s	Brand begins promoting the carajillo in Mexico	Brand account	Expansión, quoting the company
About 12 years later	Bartenders invent the shaken carajillo	Brand account	Expansión, quoting the company
September 2020	Zamora Company USA pitches the Carajillo 43 to American drinkers	Brand press release	PR Newswire
March 2021	Bottled Carajillo 43 launched, Mexico only	Brand account	Expansión, quoting the company

Sorted this way, the documented carajillo is plainer than the legends: a dictionary definition, a Catalan vocabulary, a handful of bottles, and one marketing campaign its maker calls very successful. The courage story and the Exhibition phrase explain the name more neatly than the evidence does.

The older Catalan way

Fàbrega writes that the coffee was once brewed as a mild infusion in a pot, from middling beans, often heavily roasted and cut with chicory, and that today the drink is made with espresso. The spirit followed fashion: rum or anís first, later whisky, and he has seen versions with cream liqueurs, crema catalana liqueur, mint and ratafia. Catalan names for the drink and its relatives include cigaló, rebentat, cremat, calmant and cafè amb gotes.

He describes the caffè corretto of Italian seamen as made the same way as in Catalonia: brandy, anís or rum punch in a cup with sugar, warmed with steam until the sugar dissolves, then the coffee. The Italians usually finished it with a strip of lemon peel. His grandfather, a farmer, made a holiday version after meals, hot rum in a thick glass with the coffee added to it. Most people take it after a meal, he notes, though some drink it mid-morning in winter.

On the shelf

The quantities that follow are the Dispatch's suggestion, not a sourced recipe. In a small heatproof glass, stir one teaspoon of Burlap & Barrel Panela Cane Sugar (shop Burlap & Barrel Panela Cane Sugar) into 30 ml of brandy, anís or rum and warm it gently until the sugar dissolves. Pour over about 60 ml of short, strong coffee; an AeroPress Clear (shop AeroPress Clear) makes a concentrated cup without an espresso machine. Finish the Italian way, with a strip of lemon peel cut with a Cocktail Kingdom channel knife (shop Cocktail Kingdom channel knife) and twisted over the glass.

For the rest of the Spanish drinking day, The Vermut Hour guide covers the aperitif that comes before the meal, and The Home Bar: The Complete Guide covers the tools. Visitors can ask staff questions in the shop at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek.

Fàbrega wrote, in a cookbook first published in English, that the traditional Catalan name cigaló was rapidly being displaced by the Spanish carajillo. The dictionary took the Spanish word and left the date blank.