by Andrew H Brown

Created on: January 01, 2011   Last Updated: January 05, 2011

While we were on holiday recently, my wife had a bit of a problem. No, I don't mean with her choice of travelling companion. The thing is, she's quite partial to a drop of Tia Maria of an evening and, unlike me, she's quite fussy about what she drinks. The trouble is, we were in Tuscany, where it seemed to be a Tia Maria-free zone. Oh dear.

What to do?

As I said, unlike me, Mrs P is particularly fussy when it comes to drinking alcohol, so we were facing the prospect of an alcohol-free (and quite possibly smile-free) trip. Nothing for it but to scour the supermarket shelves looking for suitable after-dinner drinks.

TIA LUSSO has been available in the UK for quite a while now, but neither of us had been tempted to try it - I had the impression that it would be very similar to Baileys. Now while there's nothing wrong with that, it's not really a drink that you'd want more than occasionally and so buying a bottle didn't seem worthwhile...so we never did.

However, needs must when the devil drives, and so it was that we came to be in possession of a bright and shiny, 70cl blue-glass bottle of the aforementioned tipple. Incidentally, If you're familiar with TM, you won't have any trouble spotting Tia Lusso - the bottle has the same wide-bottomed design and, apart from the difference in colours, the same label design - a sort of swirly, blue and gold with gold lettering...not real gold, that would just be silly and, I imagine, prohibitively expensive.

Tia Lusso, not surprisingly, is made by the same company that makes Tia Maria, Allied Domecq. They're quite a large company, I'm led to believe, but obviously don't have enough clout to stock TM in Italy.

But enough fripple-frapple, what's in the bottle?

The first thing you notice when opening the bottle is the strong, roasty aroma of coffee...caffe corretto to be precise. That is, coffee that's 'corrected' by adding a dash of alcohol, in this case rum. It also smells vaguely like vanilla ice-cream. It's quite a pleasant, enticing aroma.

On pouring it (just like beer, you shouldn't drink it straight from the bottle), I was surprised at its relative lack of viscosity. You'd imagine that, being a creamy drink, it would be thicky and gloopy but it was actually quite fluid.
It's an attractive tannish, toffee/coffee colour - rather like a caffe latte, without the froth of course.

On tasting it, I was again slightly surprised at how the cream didn't really feel thick and gooey. It did feel lush and velvety though.

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