The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Espresso Please began with a question that sounds simple: what does a perfect match smell like? Two cups on a silver tray. Porcelain, not plastic. The moment someone walks in and the whole room shifts because now there's a reason to stay. Luca Gritti built this fragrance around that specific charge, the electric, wordless second before two people acknowledge what's happening. Coffee opens the story sharp and direct, but it's the hazelnut that softens the edges. Tonka and chocolate take it somewhere warmer. The name is a request and a confession: I want this. I want more of this. The 2023 launch translated a very Italian obsession into something portable, a moment of connection, captured in a bottle you can carry anywhere.
Coffee and chocolate is a classic pairing in confectionery, but pulling it off in perfumery requires balance, too much coffee and the composition turns bitter and sharp; too much chocolate and it becomes candied, juvenile. Espresso Please navigates this by letting dark chocolate do the heavy lifting in the heart phase. Where coffee provides the initial aromatic punch, chocolate smooths the transition, adding a bitter-sweet dimension that rounds the edges. Hazelnut bridges the two, its fatty, buttery quality providing texture where the coffee might otherwise feel harsh.
The evolution
The opening hits fast, a sharp, almost acidic burst of roasted coffee that reads almost medicinal before hazelnut rushes in to soften it. Within minutes the bitterness recedes. Hazelnut takes over, buttery and warm, and the tonka bean starts to breathe underneath, sweetening everything as it goes. By the thirty-minute mark, dark chocolate enters the conversation and the character changes entirely. The scent stops being about aroma and starts being about taste, the moment chocolate begins to melt against something warm. This is the heart of the fragrance, and it lasts. The drydown belongs to tonka bean and musk, and it is here that Espresso Please earns its reputation. What arrives is not a cloud of perfume but something close, warm, almost skin-like, the kind of scent you catch on your own wrists hours later, or on the seat of a car you left an hour ago. Tonka bean's coumarin and the musk create something edible and intimate at once. This is a fragrance designed to be worn close, to travel with you, to linger.
Cultural impact
Gourmand fragrances have dominated the market for several years, and coffee-chocolate combinations represent one of the genre's most reliable note families. Espresso Please arrived in 2023 as a sweet-gourmand offering from a newer Italian house, positioning itself within a crowded category where established names have long held the territory. The reception has been shaped by its specific character: sweeter and more approachable than dry coffee fragrances, with the chocolate and tonka notes creating a warmth that reads as comforting rather than challenging.
