Starbucks 2007 Christmas Blend

“It’s that time of year, when the world falls in love”…with Starbucks Coffee all over again.  I know I may be biased, as I am a Starbucks store manager, but I have to say that the arrival of Christmas Blend every year is a special time for me.  Every year, the coffee is a similar blend, but it is always a bit different, and the slight year-to-year changes are exciting, like opening a present on Christmas.  The package is its signature red and white, sharing the company’s message of “Spread the Cheer”, the holiday rallying cry.  This coffee is a mixture of Arabica beans grown in Latin American and Indonesia, with the always special addition of Aged Indonesian coffee.  Aged coffee is stored in its green, pre-roasted form for three to five years in aging warehouses, and during that time, the coffee develops an inherent spicy characteristic, a sparkling tingle in the tongue.  Also, Christmas Blend is Starbucks’ only post-roast blend, meaning that they roast the different regional coffees to their own unique boldness and blend them afterwards to create an additional complexity.  There is nothing added to the coffee, as is the case with all Starbucks Coffee.  It is just coffee from different regions, grown and processed in different methods, which create the unique flavor profiles.  Alright, enough theory, let’s taste the 2007 Christmas Blend.

The beans smell spicy and nutty, with hints of pipe tobacco and cigar smoke, as well as an underlying earthy characteristic.  The coffee has a nice body in the mouth, smoother than expected and smoother than years past.  The spicy nose does carry over into flavor, though it is reminiscent of a sweet spice, like a peppermint and nutmeg combination.  The coffee has a mostly clean finish, and leaves me wanting more.  I can imagine this going really well with some eggnog added to it as a creamer, or with a piece of grandma’s gingerbread.

I got this Christmas Blend from a corporate holiday meeting.  This is a sneak peek of what you can expect to see in stores across the country starting on November 8^th.  This is a coffee that you are not going to want to miss, as it is, in my opinion, the best coffee of the year, so get out there and buy some!  It won’t last much past Christmas, and that’s the truth.