What Is a Cortado?

A cortado is espresso cut with roughly an equal amount of warm milk. The Spanish verb cortar means to cut, and that is exactly the intent: enough milk to take the edge off the shot, and not one drop more.

The build

• A double shot, around 60 ml.
• About the same volume of steamed milk, warmed but barely textured.
• Served in a small glass, typically 120 to 150 ml.

The milk should be silky rather than foamy. There is no cap, no dry foam and almost no room for latte art, which is the quickest way to tell a properly made cortado from a very small flat white.

How it differs from everything nearby

The espresso milk drinks differ almost entirely by ratio, and they are much easier to keep straight as a sequence than as definitions.

• Espresso macchiato. A shot "marked" with a spoon of foam. Barely any milk at all.
• Cortado. One part espresso to one part milk.
• Piccolo. A shot in a small latte glass, so more milk than a cortado in a similar-sized vessel.
• Flat white. Roughly one to two or three, with textured microfoam.
• Cappuccino. Equal thirds espresso, milk and foam. See cappuccino vs frappuccino.
• Latte. The most milk of the group, in the largest cup.

Why the glass

Tradition, and one practical reason. Glass shows the drink, and a cortado is a drink where the layering is briefly visible before it merges: a dark base, a paler band, a thin light surface. In a ceramic cup you would never see it.

It also holds heat less well, which suits a small drink meant to be finished quickly rather than nursed.

Making one at home

The hard part is the milk, not the shot. You want it warm and only just textured, which is a shorter steam than most people are used to: introduce air for a second at most, then submerge the wand and heat.

Over-textured milk gives you foam with nowhere to go, and the drink stops being a cortado at that moment. Any home espresso machine with a steam wand will do it, and it is more forgiving than a flat white because you are not pouring art.

Who it is for

Someone who likes espresso and wants the acidity softened without diluting it into a milk drink. It is the smallest drink on the menu that still tastes principally of coffee, which is why it is popular with people who order espresso in the morning and want something slightly longer in the afternoon.

If you find espresso too intense but a flat white too milky, this is the drink that sits in the gap, and it is a narrower gap than the menu suggests.

The Gibraltar, and the other names

A Gibraltar is a cortado. The name is American, and it comes from the glass: the Libbey Gibraltar tumbler, a stubby 4.5 ounce rocks glass that San Francisco cafes used for the drink. Customers began ordering by the glass rather than by the drink and the name stuck to the coffee.

It is the same build and the same ratio. If a menu lists both, somebody has made a mistake, or is charging differently for the same thing in two vessels.

Ordering one abroad

• Spain. Cafe cortado is on every menu and is the original. Expect a smaller, stronger version than a speciality cafe would build.
• Portugal. Ask for a garoto.
• Cuba and Miami. A cortadito, which adds sugar whipped into the shot before the milk goes in. Sweet by default, so say so if you do not want it.
• Italy. Caffe macchiato is the nearest thing, though it is a marked espresso rather than a cut one, with far less milk.

The pattern across all of them is the same drink arriving at slightly different strengths. None of these is a wrong version, and the Spanish one is the oldest.