Coffee is important as it is usually the last thing you taste at the end of a meal. It’s the flavour that lingers on your palate when you have tasted everything else — get the coffee wrong and it could spoil the whole meal experience.

The Cherizena Coffee Beans Company brings out some interesting coffee products at this time of the year, including a Christmas coffee created with Colombian beans flavoured with rum, nuts, orange and spices. They also produce beans flavoured with Irish whiskey cream and Grand Marnier, which are delicious and certainly very festive.

A number of liqueur manufacturers are now advising that you drink their products over ice. Certainly, serve them this way if you wish, but also consider serving them as they are in a small glass along with the coffee.

FAIR Café Liqueur, distributed by Fair Trade Spirits Coffee, offers a superb way of enhancing the coffee course during the festive period. This liqueur is produced with a Fair Trade Certificate, from organic beans harvested by the 2,000 small independent producers from the Huatsco Co-operative, Mexico. The sugar used in the making of this liqueur is sourced from the Lower Shore Valley, Malawi, and is harvested and grown by 300 independent producers — all of whom are given a fair price for their products.

This full-bodied sweet liqueur gives you the authenticity of the original bean and delivers the true taste of roasted coffee. It is delicious served just as it is, or poured over ice cubes.

And if you want to serve chocolate with the coffee course, look out for the quirky Santa Cows and reindeer made by choconchoc which will delight the children who are too young to drink a liqueur with their coffee.