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As a shopping writer, my job involves sifting through what feels like miles of emails about smart new products, delicious-sounding food, and fun experiences on the daily. And while I enjoy hearing about all the great stuff out there, I'll admit it's taken more and more to get me *truly* excited by a new product as the years have gone by – I've become a bit of a sceptic, tbh.
With that said, my ears definitely pricked up when M&S emailed me saying their cafés were about to offer the "the hottest new style of coffee to reach the UK since the flat white". It was a massive claim – being honest, I felt like messaging Mark and/or Spencer myself to say 'boys, you're really going to have to prove yourself on this one'.
Still, I was intrigued. Their (slightly slept-on) café offerings are always impressive, and besides, a bit of hype is to be expected when a brand launches something new. So, I rocked up to a secret preview of their all-new 'Magic Coffee' with no real expectations other than getting to try a decent cuppa – and left with the unshakeable suspicion that M&S might be onto something genuinely exciting.
The preview took place in Soho, where I was led into a room and sat in front of a little counter. The brand's head of coffee started talking to me about the four drinks I was about to try, all of which are made from the same signature blend of single-origin coffee (and which would all somehow taste completely unlike each other). So far, so intriguing, right?
My first drink was M&S' espresso – a nice toffee-ish, almost malty coffee that's been their mainstay for a while now. Their head of coffee explained the extraction times and water volume involved in making it (which, if you're interested, is 30 seconds and 60ml) – I've binge-watched enough James Hoffmann videos to understand that that's about par for the course for an intense double espresso.
That espresso is the current base for M&S' lattes and flat whites, but this is where things got interesting: I was then shown something called a double ristretto, which uses the same amount of coffee but is made in less time (15 seconds I think?) and which has less water (30ml). It's a light, almost fruity shot which never gets the chance to become bitter – this was going to be the base of their all-new coffee, and I was already pretty sold.
Side note: I was so enamoured that I asked if M&S sold the ristretto separately – so far they don't explicitly have it on the menu, but I'll definitely be annoying my barista for a shot on mornings when I want that espresso perk without a strong aftertaste. After all, the 1,000+ M&S baristas who've already been trained to make their Magic Coffee have got this part down pat.
I'm not above being *that* customer.
Next, we started talking dairy. I was given a regular flat white – the drink their new launch was being compared to – which was made from that bigger, darker espresso shot and around 177ml of velvety-smooth textured milk. Maths means nothing to me, but coffee does, and this was a great one – you do need a lot of lovely creamy milk to balance out that treacly espresso, and they got it down to hazelnut-ish perfection. (Remember when I said their cafés were already great?)
And finally – the thing we're all here for – I was shown their all-new Magic Coffee, the drink that they'd built all this hype around. It was made from that smaller, sweeter, almost fruity ristretto and about 148ml of textured milk (so less liquid overall, but the same amount of coffee). And much as my hard-hearted, cynical self wanted to be objective and aloof about it all, I have to admit: it was love at first sip.
In a word, it was just so smooth. Bold and intense but subtly sweet, unusually bright, and not as – I believe this is a technical term – claggy as I sometimes find flat whites to be, there somehow wasn't a trace of bitterness. Most importantly, I was impressed by how different this coffee was to all other brews I'd tried before. For someone who'd shown up expecting something a little gimmicky, like a wacky flavoured milk or some oddly-prepared coffee beans, I had to hand it to them – this was the exact kind of legit, bored barista-style tinkering that actually did lead to the creation of the flat white.
The final thing that convinced me M&S were onto something was the history behind the drink. Their team went to caffeine-obsessed Melbourne to find the new 'it' coffee, which makes sense – if you've ever tried to suggest a generic coffee chain to an Aussie, you'll understand how they're ferocious enough to live among all those snakes and spiders. Magic Coffee has been a cult hit there for years now, where it's known as the "barista's choice". My inner Deborah Meaden went "I'm going to offer you all the money for 1%" the second M&S told me they'd gotten an exclusive UK patent for their Magic Coffee recipe.
So, the crucial question – do I think M&S actually do have the next flat white on their hands? Well, if I could predict those kinds of things, I probably wouldn't be typing this from a slightly lumpy mattress while waiting for my microwave rice to finish cooking. But here's what I do know; 1) I'll be buying Magic Coffees all the time now they're out, 2) I haven't been as buzzed after a product tasting for a while (though maybe that's the caffeine's fault), and 3) when their head of coffee said that if his team hadn't found a drink genuinely worth bringing back to the UK then they wouldn't have done anything at all, I believed him.
