Starbucks Christmas Blend Vintage 2019 Review
I’ll be honest, I was a little lost when I started looking into the Starbucks Christmas Blend for 2019. It seemed almost identical to the 2019 Christmas Espresso Roast as was as their at-home offering of the Holiday Blend.
To be thorough and fair, though, I grabbed it to try and compare - and I am glad I did.
ABOUT
For 2019, the Starbucks Christmas Blend focuses on the now 35 year tradition of having a powerful roast to celebrate the holidays. According to Starbucks, this is what their customers have done now for 35 years. On the Starbucks website, they classify this as a “full-bodied spicy and rich cup of coffee with dark-tasted Latin American and mellow Indonesian coffees.”
Additionally, they note that there is a finishing touch to this roast - “the addition of rare, spicy Sumatra beans, carefully aged to bring out their deep notes of cedar and sweet, black licorice.”
I love cedar notes, and hate anything and everything that has black licorice.
Starbucks does recommend that this coffee be paired with their Cranberry Bliss bar, which to me indicates that this roast is extremely bitter and spicy. I still do not think that black licorice pairs with anything, but I could be wrong.
REVIEW
On the bag of this Christmas Blend coffee, Starbucks offers a simple explanation of the tasting notes - “spicy and sweet.” I would like to think that someone found some sweetness in this roast, but I did not. Perhaps the sweetness is rooted in the tradition of having a dark roast of coffee during the holiday season while curling up next to your Christmas tree with a great book. That, indeed, sounds sweet and welcoming. As far as finding sweet notes in this coffee, i was unable to do so.
It is a dark, spicy, powerful punch of flavor - one that should definitely be paired with something sweet. Christmas sugar cookies come to mind.
And nothing is wrong with a roast this dark and powerful, but it does seem to be a little misleading to put sweet as a flavor note.
As far as a the on-bag description of this coffee, Starbucks offers the following:
“Created in 1984, this coffee is like family. And it wouldn’t be Christmas without it. We take rare Sumatran beans, aged three to five years, and add them to a blend of coffees from Colombia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. The resulting cup is full-bodied and festive, bursting with spice and nostalgia. It’s one of our oldest traditions and greatest joys. Merry Coffee.”
Yes, this is a full-bodied coffee AF. Absolutely though and through. It is the kind of dark roast that, for some reason, I picture a grisly biker drinking just as black as it comes. It is the kind of coffee, too, that memories are made from because it is just that uniquely dark and forceful. This may not be a coffee for everyone, but there is definitely a crowd that would love this.
I am on the fence about it, primarily from the licorice notes in it. I can look past that to see that it is a solid dark roast coffee - one that could easily become a roast to have around the Christmas season year after year.
Rating: 7.1/10