And Now For Something Completely Different!
March 28, 2009 by Marye Audet
Filed under Coffee
So. Keep in mind that I gave the Starbucks Ipanema Bourbon a great review…
Starbucks recently introduced what may be the biggest set back for coffee drinkers since it was being boiled with eggshells over open fires by men named Slim, Cookie, and Billy Joe.
Starbucks Via is their newest foray into grasping at straws…. Short for Very Icky Aroma. So, brace yourselves..because we’re goin’ in..
O.k.. the packaging is nice. I like it. Slimline, nice colors…good deco/upscale look.
But it goes down hill from the moment you open it and the scent of the coffee spills out. If you have ever walked in to one of those pancake houses where the Bunn has been sitting on the burner with the same coffee in it for three days…OR if you have ever had the coffee at the OCmpany B mess hall at the Presidio of Monterey then you will have experienced the exotic aroma that wafted up from the package upon tearing it open. And I hadn’t even added water yet.
I poured a little out on my hand. It was a beautiful, dark, microgrind. I tasted it. After my tongue uncurled I felt read to go on to making the coffee.
Pouring the package into the water was easy. Stirring it, yep, easy. It was the drinking that was tough.
The odor of carefully and methodically scorched coffee intensified until it permeated my room. The liquer is murkyand dark and if you don’t get it all stirred in you have sort of a sludge buildup on the sides of the cup. Nice.
Taste is bitter, scorched, and stale. If you have a fantasy of becoming a 1930s style journalist with a cigarette, a fedora, and a cheap suit then this is the coffee for you for sure. If not, go ahead and donate it to the displaced cowboys society of Wyoming or something.
On a scale of 1-5? Let’s not go there. This is on equal footing with the Duncan Donuts coffee I reviewed.
Image: Starbucks
I just received a sample of the VIA in the mail. I didn’t have much high hopes to begin with, but now I’m just afraid to try it.
Oh dear! Sometimes your having to review coffee is ” it’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it” and sometimes it’s “I wish somebody else had to do it.” Hope that you got rid of that awful taste with the Ipanema Bourbon.
Just grab a fedora Mike ..and I think you will do o.k..how is your Bogey accent? Seriously..let me know what your thoughts are…when you get out of the hospital… :::grin:::
Vee- even better..I was doing my daring bakers gig on Baking delights..it should be posted there later…Now THAT was something to wash your mouth out with.
Well I think ALL Starbuck’s coffee taste bitter, scorched, and stale so really they haven’t come up with anything new!
!!!
Excellent review Marye
I hope you had a great weekend!!
xoxo Cori G.
Cori- it is new in that they have fallen to new depths of nastiness.
I agree. Bitter and too disgusting to drink. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.
Yep Peggy, I was pretty sure when you said you couldn’t handle it that I was not in for a divine experience.