With the festive season in full swing, lovers of hot drinks from Starbucks and Costa will have been revelling in the return of specialised seasonal drinks from the now-global coffee chains.
We’ll explore the flavour profiles, textures, and overall satisfaction of each drink, helping you decide which festive beverage should be your go-to this holiday season…
We’ll explore the flavour profiles, textures, and overall satisfaction of each drink, helping you decide which festive beverage should be your go-to this holiday season…
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, my name's Jack Marshall. I'm a digital food and drink reporter with the City Worlds
00:05group. And straight off the bat, I must apologize. I've been stricken down with a classic winter
00:09cold. So many people struggling with it. I'm sure loads of people you know as well will
00:14have been afflicted with it. But anyway, less of that, more of this behind me. What I'm
00:18doing today is a bit of a taste test and a bit of a comparison between some of our top
00:22festive drinks, which are currently on the market and on the shelves and available available
00:26to pick up a couple of the top top retailers, top global branches, top global brands for
00:34for classic coffees. So I did Costa and Starbucks and I went around and I thought, what classic
00:39festive drinks have they got out this year? And I thought I'd do a bit of a comparison.
00:42I did one festive hot chocolate and one festive coffee and I thought I'd compare them both
00:48and see who comes out on top. So the first one we did was hot chocolate and I did Costa's
00:53Terry's chocolate, orange hot chocolate and Starbucks's fudge brownie hot chocolate. Now
00:58straight off the bat, we're going to talk about the Terry's chocolate orange one from
01:01Costa that had a nice orange crumb on top. It had a nice bit of cream on top. Lovely
01:06flavor, lovely creaminess to it. Obviously you've got the orange flavor coming through.
01:10It's really nice. I love a chocolate orange, especially this time of year, but it also
01:13had a lovely kind of chocolatey base to it as well. So there's a nice balance. It wasn't
01:17just like really overwhelming with a really powerful orange flavor to it. It had a nice
01:22balance between that rich chocolatiness as well. Nice creaminess coming from the cream,
01:26obviously, on top of that. One main thing I'd say about this drink is that it really
01:30tasted homemade. It didn't taste just like a, you know, like a mass produced hot chocolate
01:35like what it actually is. It tasted homemade. It had a lovely kind of authenticity to it.
01:40I mean, it had a nice balance between kind of like the sweet chocolate and the slightly
01:43more bitter orange flavor. It just, it didn't have that slight hint of artificiality, which
01:48you can get with some of these things when they're pumping the amount of flavoring into
01:52these kind of drinks. It didn't have that at all. So I thought that was really good.
01:55Moving on to the Starbucks fudge brownie hot chocolate. I was a little underwhelmed by
01:58this. It started off incredible. It had a layer of whipped cream on top with like a
02:02chocolate crumb on top of that. And that was incredible. That was really, really nice.
02:06Lovely touch. Lovely start to the drink. Then it got to the hot chocolate itself and I don't
02:11know, it was a bit, it was a little thin. It just, you were very, it was very obvious
02:17that you were, you were tasting something that just had a weaker flavor profile when
02:20compared to the Costa one. It just didn't really stack up. There was a bit of rich chocolatiness
02:26to it, but it kind of dissipated very quickly. And it was just very clearly just like milkiness.
02:32It just, it was so obviously the inferior version when compared to the Costa one. So
02:36yeah, I'm going to have to give the victory on that front on the festive hot chocolate
02:40front to Costa. Moving on to the coffees. I tried a gingerbread latte from both places.
02:46So the Costa gingerbread and cream latte straight off the bat, thick cream on top, and they
02:49give you a little gingerbread man as well, which said a lovely little touch. That was
02:52very delicious. The coffee taste really came through with the Costa one. It definitely
02:57tasted like a coffee with a hint of gingerbread in it, which is different to the Starbucks
03:02one, which we'll come on to in a minute. But the kind of gingerbread flavor, which was
03:06coming through, I did notice it. It was, it was quite artificial. It tasted quite sickly.
03:11It was more on the sweeter rather than the spicy side of things. And the actual, the
03:16actual coffee itself was quite milky. It was quite kind of thin. Not my favorite. I wouldn't
03:23have gone back for it at all. Really. It wasn't, it wasn't really my kind of my kind of vibe.
03:28So not the best thing in the world. The Starbucks one, however, it had a very strong kind of
03:31pumpkin spice latte vibe to it. It almost tasted of clothes. It was that kind of pungent.
03:37I'm not the biggest fan of pumpkin spice latte, but this one was okay. Cause the gingerbread
03:41is a different flavor profile to the PSL. So the gingerbread was a nicer flavor. It
03:47was okay. It was very Christmassy. There was lots of spice in there. Like I say, it was
03:53a nicer overall drink than the Costa one, definitely. And it was, the main thing I'd
03:56say about it is that it was very satisfying in the sense that it felt thick and viscous
04:00and I felt full after having drank it. So that definitely won out when we're talking
04:05about the festive coffees. So, uh, yeah, just to recap, we did, um, Costa's, um, Terry's
04:11chocolate, orange hot chocolate against Starbucks as fudge brownie and Costa's was by miles
04:16the winner on that front. And then we compared both of their gingerbread lattes and I think
04:20Starbucks shaded it on that front. Um, but yeah, let us know about your favorite festive
04:24drinks. If you've got to go to this time of year, every single outlet is absolutely teaming
04:27with them. There's hazelnut this and black forest that. So let us know about your favorite
04:32ones in the comments below and thanks for watching and have a wonderful Christmas. Cheers.