JustASC

This is a big moment for me: my first test of Starbuck’s Via.

My whole adult life I’ve complained about instant coffee. How hard can it be to approximate the taste of coffee? Not good coffee, necessarily, but ballpark? They do it in candies, why not a jar? 

I can’t even say that I hate the taste of your average instant — it can be pretty good with enough sweetener. But it isn’t coffee.

Starbucks is promising real coffee taste in its new instant. So here goes. My first taste.

Nothing. No wait — something. Not much flavor up front, but it leaves a little umami and a coffee-like bitterness as it goes over the back of my tongue. No real coffee aroma that I can tell. On the other hand, it doesn’t have the Sanka flavor either, so you don’t feel deceived. Just — let down.

As Mark Twain said, “If this is the coffee, I’ll take the tea. If this is the tea, bring me the coffee.”

I’m still waiting.