You haven’t lived until you’ve tried Stappj, the per­fect way to get your caf­feine dur­ing the sum­mer heat. From an Italian soda com­pany founded in 1896, they pro­duce nine dif­fer­ent flavours includ­ing Orange, Lemon and Gossoso.

According to Wikipedia, “Stappj is a rather dif­fi­cult bev­er­age to find out­side of its native Italy. This is due to the dif­fi­culty in find­ing a clien­tele able to stom­ach its potent blend of sugar and spring water.”

Kerry Knight, a fan of Stappj al Caffe, scoffs at this descrip­tion, “It just tastes like sweet fizzy cof­fee. The ingre­di­ents are just cof­fee, sugar and car­bon­ated water and that’s all it tastes like.”

Inspired, Kerry cre­ated a cock­tail for sum­mer, he chris­tened it “the Machiavelli” say­ing, ” It will make you feel like a Renaissance man!”

The Machiavelli

Ingredients

2 oz. vanilla vodka

1 bot­tle Stappj al Caffe

3 cof­fee beans

ice cubes

Steps

1. Put a few ice cubes in a Tom Collins glass

2. add vodka

3. top with Stappj and drop in the cof­fee beans

4. Stir

Optional sexy gar­nishes — orange slice dipped half in instant cof­fee and half in vanilla sugar, make the dipped orange slices ahead of time and freeze.