A whole latte liquor
Starbucks has staked out a home on every corner of your city, conquered your coffeepot with its branded bags of beans, and invaded your freezer with caramel cappuccino swirl ice cream. And now the java giant has set its sights on your liquor cabinet, too, with Starbucks Coffee Liqueur ($23).
The shaker-shaped bottle won't be available in Starbucks retail locations, only in bars and liquor stores. But Starbucks aims to capture the same clientele it lures into its cozy cafes. The key, says the company's green coffee quality director, Andrew Linnemann, is using the exact beans in its house blend: "It's a medium-bodied coffee with a nice balance of acidity and flavor." It's a shift from those bottled Frappuccinos and frozen treats Starbucks has put out in the past that needed a "roastier" flavor to cut through all the sweetness and cream. So, the liqueur should provide a more familiar experience for Starbucks fans looking to re-create their morning rituals even on a night out on the town.
Coffee clash. But when slurping a libation instead of a latte, can coffee drinkers really tell the difference between Starbucks brand and Kahlua, its cheaper ($16), well-known coffee liqueur counterpart? Actually, yes. In a blind taste test conducted by U.S. News, all 10 testers guessed the identity of the Starbucks drink--from the aroma, which is akin to sticking your head into a steaming cup of joe, and the taste, which one tester described as "like biting into chocolate-covered coffee beans." Testers with a sweet tooth, however, preferred Kahlua's less pungent flavor. "The Starbucks is more bitter, like coffee," opined one.
After whipping up the drinks listed in the recipe booklet around the Starbucks bottleneck, all of the testers became believers. While coffee liqueur tends to conjure images of heavy winter beverages perfect for sitting by the fire, Starbucks tosses away that notion with the caffe fizz--one part Starbucks liqueur, one part vanilla rum, mixed with ginger ale. Our testers went wild over the pool-party-perfect punch, with one going so far as to deem it "gravity defying." A similar Kahlua concoction was also a hit but proved slightly heavier. In a face-off between white russians mixed with Kahlua and Starbucks brand, the latter won over the coffee lovers with its Frappuccino-ish taste (although everybody still liked the classic kind mixed with Kahlua).
If Starbucks does manage to succeed in the booze biz, we can't wait until bartenders start fielding orders for venti martinis and decaf skim shooters.
This story appears in the March 14, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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