Latte English-speaking countries "latte" is shorthand for "caffelatte" or "caffellatte" (from "caffè e latte", "coffee and milk"), which is similar to the French "café au lait", the Spanish "café con leche", the Catalan "cafè amb llet" or the Portuguese "galão." The Caffe Mediterraneum in Berkeley, California claims Lino Meiorin, one of its early owners, "invented" and "made the latte a standard drink" in the 1950s. The latte was popularized in Seattle, Washington in the early 1980s and spread more widely in the early 1990s. In northern Europe and Scandinavia, a similar "trend" started in the early 1980s as "café au lait"
Latte faster and through a much smaller stream. Calling people "latte drinkers" pejoratively has become a common political attack in Western cultures. The popularity of espresso drinking in large cities, especially among more affluent urban populations, has caused some to consider it elitist behavior. In the United States, conservative political commentators have been known to call their opponents "latte-drinking liberal elites." In Canadian politics, latte drinking is used to portray people as out-of-touch intellectuals and the antithesis of the Tim Hortons coffee drinker that is considered representative of an ordinary Canadian. In Scandinavian politics, the term "the caffè latte segment" is