The History of Torani Coffee Syrup

In 1925, Rinaldo and Ezilda Torre began creating hand-crafted syrups from recipes that they brought with them from Italy when they moved to San Francisco. The first flavors they made were: Anisette, Grenadine, Lemon, Orgeat, and Tamarindo. When Prohibition ended, Ezilda became one of the first female rectifiers of distilled spirits in the United States, but the company’s first coffee syrup flavoring wasn’t created until 1982, when Torani Vanilla Syrup hit the market. It was reportedly used to create the first flavored latte and helped usher in the trend for flavored coffee drinks. Notably, coffee industry veteran LC “Brandy” Brandenburg played a key role by suggesting that Torani use their syrups to flavor coffee rather than liquors or sodas, as the company had been doing previously. He even brought cases of Torani syrup to Portland, Oregon, where he demonstrated that they could be used to flavor coffee. By 1994, more flavorings had been added to Torani's coffee syrup line and the company's flavorings were popping up in cafés all over the world. (Notably, Starbucks used Torani syrups when the chain first began making flavored lattes, but later switched to producing its own line of coffee flavorings.) Around 2009, Torani began selling coffee syrups at various grocery stores. Today, Torani offers a wide variety of coffee syrups for home use and also supplies the syrups to a variety of cafés.