For A More Creative Take On Your Macchiato, Order It One And One

The espresso macchiato is a classic of Italian coffee culture, with the rich brown espresso delicately marked by the creamy white of the milk (macchiato in Italian translates to stained). But a slightly different version of the drink is one of the most interesting in the world of third-wave coffee, and that's the one and one.

The one and one splits a double shot of espresso into two single shots; each served in 4-ounce cups; one is served black, and one as a macchiato. If you order this at a third-wave or specialty café, you might also get asked how you want your macchiato. Some places will serve it the traditional Italian way, with just a teaspoon or two of rich milk foam, while others will steam milk as they would for a latte or flat white, so they can pour latte art and serve it as a full 4-ounce drink.

The point of the one and one is to compare how a café's espresso tastes both black and with milk; it's great if you're visiting a café you've never been to before or if you frequent somewhere that regularly rotates the coffee it uses for espresso. You're unlikely to see it on a menu but ask, and the barista should be able to whip one up.

The one and one was created by Jared Truby and Chris Baca, two baristas at Verve Coffee in Los Angeles, in 2012. The drink came out of the duo preparing for the U.S. Barista Championship, which requires competitors to serve espresso and milk drinks made with a single shot. In an interview with Food GPS, Baca recalls that Truby "Had a single espresso, and a single macchiato ... He didn't have another saucer, so he stacked them together on the fly and put it out."

In the same interview, Truby explains the reason for basing the milky portion of the drink on the macchiato: "A single shot macchiato is close to the same ratio as a cappuccino and so this works perfectly. You can taste your espresso and then have it in milk assuring, as long as you did a good job, that your coffee will taste optimally in all ways."

Although Truby and Baca served the original one and one on a single saucer, that trick is one wobble away from a lot of espresso hitting the floor. Now, most cafés will give you two saucers.

Although the one and one is a creative take on an Italian macchiato, it really shines in the context of more modern, third-wave or specialty coffee. This is because Italian coffee culture still prizes very darkly roasted beans, historically roasted as such, so that the flavor could be extracted quickly. However, coffee roasted this way mostly tastes chocolatey, with caramel and nutty notes, more like the flavor of the roasting process than of the coffee itself.

By contrast, lightly roasted coffees display more of a coffee's terroir, the flavors determined by the type of coffee it is, where it is grown, and how it is processed. As such, different coffees will have very different flavors, not just from country to country but even region to region of the same country; even the same beans, grown in the same place, can taste very different because of the huge variety in coffee processing. The one and one is a great route to sampling these differences, and understanding why you like coffee the way you like it.