Double Grande, Venti, Grande cups

This post is the kissing cousin to the tea menu featured a few weeks ago in this blog.  At the same time that Starbucks experimented with whole leaf in their stores, they tested a larger sized iced beverage. It was called “double grande” and 32 ounces in size.  The test size was intended for Tazo tea beverages, and not Frappuccinos.  Unfortunately, I didn’t save any of the old 32 ounce to-go cups, and the only picture I could find is attached. The “double grande” size prominently says Tazo Tea on it.  Adjacent to it is a typical Venti Starbucks cup, and then next to that is one of the very early cold reusable iced to-go tumblers.

What do you guys think of a “double grande” size? Great for cooling off in the summer, or reminds you of “super size” me too much?

Edit on March 3, 2010:

Much to my surprise, Starbucks again is testing a super large cold drink size.  The new round of testing is called the “Trenta” and is a test product currently, through the end of the month, in Phoenix and Tampa.

I have a recent blog post featuring the “Trenta” cup here:

Starbucks tests the “Trenta” cup size.

Starbucks Sumatra and Aged Sumatra Coffee postage Stamps

The endangered Sumatran tiger roams – close to near extinction – on this hot, moist, tropical island where lush Sumatran pines, rhododendron, and bamboo color the landscape.  This small Indonesian island is the birthplace of Sumatra coffee, processed, and created in a unique way steeped in tradition, and un-replicated anywhere else in the world.

Coffee trees in Sumatra grow on small farms at high altitudes from above 3000 feet to even 6000 feet and harvested from about May to October.  For a comparison of the altitude, if a Seattlelite drives east over Snoqualmie Pass the summit of the pass is at about 3000 feet. This would be the very starting point of the growing region.  The many farmers of Sumatra have very small farms, with the average farm only having about 200 trees on it.  This tiny in comparison to many areas in Latin America where it would not be surprising to encounter a farm with 2,000 coffee trees.  One coffee tree at harvest time produces enough coffee cherries for about one pound of beans.  Next time you walk into a Starbucks and look at the coffee wall, imagine one tree for every bag of coffee on the wall, and all the work that went in to getting the coffee bean from tree to the shelf at Starbucks.

A family then harvests their lot of 200 so trees together, with perhaps 4 or 5 heads working to pluck off the ready coffee cherries for processing. Imagine the coffee cherry like a peach (though a peach is much larger) and so you have a sticky, moist, wet fruit over the hard bean/seed center which the family want to get at.  The next step is called “de pulping” which is the process of removing the outer layer of fleshy cherry from the coffee seed. I found a you-tube video showing this exact process here.  Because the island of Sumatra uses a very manual process, the depulping mill may be shared among several farms or a community, and the leaders of the community arrange for it to be borrowed by a family on harvest day.  The depulping of the coffee cherry should occur within 24 hours of harvest because a cherry left unpulped for too long may rotten and spoil leaving an undesirable flavor in the coffee.

The coffee cherries are processed through the depulpers, and out of one side of the pulping mill there is now a pile of sticky, parchment enclosed coffee beans, and the other side has wet fruit.  This is very different than in Latin America where the depulping mills may be very large sophisticated automatic machines.  De-pulping usually is an old wooden hand-cranked depulping machine.

The family picks up, by handfuls, the coffee cherry (still covered with remnants of sticky fruit and parchment) and manually simply passes them through a series of buckets of water to attempt to remove some of the stickiness of the coffee cherry. This is done carefully, handful by handful, with no automation at all. In contrast, in Latin America the coffee beans may actually be fully washed at this stage in large vats of water, rather than briefly passing through a few buckets by hand.

Next the coffee beans are dried to about 30% moisture on tarps for a few hours before collected and hauled to a co-op mill for wet hulling. The purpose of hulling is to remove more of the mucilage as well as the parchment over the bean. The coffee beans have a thin parchment layer, much like a peanut has a thin parchment around it.  In some growing regions, the hulling is done on the dry bean, but in Sumatra the bean still retains much moisture, and they’re white in color, and have a rubbery softness to them.  The hulling machine rips off the parchment from the coffee bean.  This 30% percent moisture level of the bean means that the bean still is semi-wet, and retains about 30% of its moisture.

The next step in the process involves a final stage of drying, after the hulling, which may last from just a few days to a full week depending on whether the sunshine is shining brightly on the island, or if it is raining.  The farmer and his family carefully lay out the coffee beans on some tarps in the backyard of their farm for a period of drying.  If it rains, the family is on the alert and must run out and cover their coffee beans.

The family is now waiting for the coffee beans to get to about 12 percent moisture level before removing them from the tarps.  In other growing regions, some farmers may have special tools or equipment designed to measure the moisture content of the coffee beans at various stages in this process, but in Sumatra, there are no measuring tools of any kind. The farmers just “know” when it is time to move on to the next step. They know because they’ve learned it all slowly on the farm, and they have some intuitive sense at each stage of the process.  In Latin America, you might even find farms with a mechanical dryer to speed this process up.  The coffee beans can easily be spoiled and produce an off-taste at any stage if the beans do not dry enough or are over-dried.  It is truly remarkable that the Sumatran farmer just “knows” when it is time for the next step in the processing of the coffee bean.

The farmer and his family collect the beans and package them into burlap bags to ready them for shipment around the world.  Some farmers working with Starbucks may send small samples of the beans to Lausanne, Switzerland, where Starbucks has a central location for global green bean sourcing.  As mentioned before, in Sumatra, coffee is produced through thousands of very small farms, usually less than one hectre in size.  In 2008, there were 24,516 family farms on Sumatra participating in C.A.F.E. practices.  For more information about Starbucks coffee sourcing practices, visit their Shared Planet report.

This unique process of process of sourcing coffee from Sumatra has never been replicated in any part of the world to create the same flavor profile as the Sumatra coffee bean – its hallmark is a deep earthy quality, full-bodied, with notes of mushrooms and butter. The green beans are roasted become the Starbucks Sumatra coffee that we customers know and love.

However the story of Starbucks Sumatra coffee is not over.  Many thousands of pounds of Sumatra coffee are purchased by Starbucks, and some lots of it are designated for shipment to Starbucks partners in Singapore for the “aging” phase of the coffee. The burlap coffee bags are loaded onto a boat, and sent to Singapore where Starbucks has a special warehouse for the coffee to age three to five years.  The warehouse is secure building designed with numerous upper level open windows for the tropical winds to waft through and work their magic on the beans.  Singapore partners store the burlap bags of beans on palettes stocked extremely high, yet 4 times a year the bags are inspected, vacuumed, and flipped for proper aging.  Once every six months the whole palette of beans goes through a rotation so that the beans that were on the top are now on the bottom, and vice versa.  The Singapore Starbucks partners remove samples of the beans once every six months, and send these samples to Starbucks partners in Seattle, Washington, to check the aging process and determine when the beans are ready for roasting.

There is a risk that some of the beans will be ruined; they may turn rancid or never produce a the high-quality beautiful spicy note that Aged Sumatra is known for.  The unusual spicy flavor of Aged Sumatra comes from this magical process of time (years), care, and tropical Singapore winds. When several lots are ready for roasting a production they are blended together to create the perfect combination of flavors.  A lot of Starbucks Aged Sumatra may be as much as 40,000 pounds of coffee beans.  In 2008, Starbucks sourced about 120,000 pounds (3 lots) of Aged Sumatra which then became the key magical ingredients in Starbucks Anniversary Blend Coffee, Starbucks Christmas Blend Coffee, Seattle’s Best Autumn Reserve Coffee, and sometimes sold as small-batch “Aged Sumatra” either in Clover stores or in limited quantities in a Starbucks coffeehouse.  All Starbucks coffees featuring a blend that includes Aged Sumatra are blended post-roasting. In other words, the Aged Sumatra beans are roasted separately from other beans and then blended with other beans in huge spinning mixer machines, and then packaged into flavor-lock packaging.

The coffee beans have turned a very light brown from the process of aging for years. They are brown before roasting, unlike an un-aged coffee bean which is green at the time of roasting.  One can easily see the difference in the beans in the photo here of the 2 pre-roasted Sumatra beans in the blue bins (Aged Sumatra is on the right). For a larger picture of the pre-roasted Starbucks Sumatra beans, click here.  And for a close-up pic of the pre-roasted Aged Sumatra beans click here.  For comparison, click here for a close up of the green, un-aged, Sumatra coffee beans. As I write this blog entry, currently Aged Sumatra is available for purchase as a small-batch coffee in Starbucks Clover stores.  Currently the packaging of the Aged Sumatra is simply the standard Clover small batch packaging which is in a plain white bag with a brown name sticker, and a red stripe around the bag.  The reverse side of the Aged Sumatra packaging, like in the case of all the small-batch Starbucks coffee offerings, includes the date that the coffee was roasted.  Click here for a picture of the reverse side of the bag.

If anyone knows of any errors in the above information, please contact me.  Thank you again to Larry Aldrich of Seattle Custom Framing for assisting me with a number of photos used in this blog entry.

Clover Small Batch coffee Aged Sumatra

Sumatra beans, un-aged and aged side by side

Winter, a man on an adventure to visit every Starbucks

I caught up with Winter at 15^th Avenue Coffee and Tea today who was passing through Seattle to visit 15^th Avenue Coffee and Tea, and then heading up to Canada.  He’s an intense goal-driven person with a sense of humor, and kind personality.  He has been pursuing a goal of visiting every company-operated Starbucks for the past twelve years, and you can follow his adventures on his website.  He’s just come from a trip to Chile, and we talked about the music being very Beatles-focused right now, and he noticed “Even in Chile they had the Beatles”.

We had a casual conversation with him enjoying a “pour over” cup of coffee and so here are some short excerpts:  (By the way he liked the Pour Over saying “it’s better than drip”).

Melody:            Has your opinion of Starbucks changed with your 12 years of experience?

Winter:            Regrettably, yes, for the negative.  I have had so many negative interactions with Starbucks baristas that I just don’t feel the same joy about Starbucks that I did in 1995, 1996, 1997 …I just see them making mistakes and trying to correct the mistakes but making more mistakes.

Melody:            Since you travel all over the place you must encounter test products all the time.  Do you notice those things? Do you make note of them?

Winter:            Yeah of course.  I like to try them – like the Sorbetto in southern California. That was great.  I liked it. The shaken double shot with cream like the canned product but  actually fresh where they pour the espresso shots and shake them with cream and sugar.  I saw it in Nashville. I remember the Chantico when it was called Chocofino; I had it in the Chicago market.

Melody:            What is your favorite overseas beverage that you’ve had? I’ve heard they have a lot of totally different beverages.

Winter:            The orange juice.

Melody.           The orange juice?

Winter:            Because they have fresh squeezed orange juice at a lot of the overseas stores : France, Spain, Mexico, Greece, Turkey … Actual orange juice squeezed from oranges.

Melody:            Do you visit other sites in the city when you go somewhere besides visiting Starbucks?

Winter:            I am not big on tourist attractions.  I try to get to museums and anything else that attracts me…. I went to the Tate Modern.  I went to the National Portrait Gallery.  I went to some photography museums …

Melody:            So what’s your usual drink, when you’re at home in Texas?

Winter:            Just regular drip coffee.

Melody:            Do you drink Pike Place Roast?

Winter:            I do drink Pike Place Roast … If they have Verona or Columbia, I’ll try that.

Melody:            Did you make it to all the stores closing?

Winter:            I missed the store in Hillsborough, Oregon. That was very …

Melody:            …tragic…

Winter:            Actually it was …

Melody:            You don’t follow anyone back on twitter, why is that?

Winter:            Time.

Melody:            How much longer before you’re done with all of this? Seeing all the stores?

Winter:            I’m never going to be done.  After this trip I will have reached a state where I won’t be doing as much traveling around North America anymore because they won’t be opening as many stores.

After meeting with him and reviewing the conversation, I realized that I talked over him too much, and I’d make a lousy reporter. Some other interesting things I learned about him is that he likes the symphony, and that he competitively plays Scrabble and has been ranked in the top 30 Scrabble players in North America.  Thank you Winter for meeting with me! Great fun catching up with Winter over coffee at 15th Ave. Coffee!

While at 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea, I snapped a few pictures inside the store just for fun:

Starbucks Coffee Postage Stamp Lunch Box

At the 2009 annual meeting of shareholders, Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks Coffee Company, said this: “One of the things I recently read is that Starbucks Coffee Co. is not cool any more. I’ve been here 27 years, we have never set out to be cool. We don’t want to be cool, we want to be relevant…”

Just for this one blog entry, I want to take “relevant” and put it on the back-burner and have a little fun with cool Starbucks schwag.  All I am going to do is share with you a few of my favorite Starbucks things which might be very cool to me, but dorky to the rest of the world. And now for a Starbucks schwag tour:

**The lunch box:

In September 2008, I had a tour of the Starbucks headquarters which included an excursion to the partner store.  While there, I picked up this lunch box, which still a year later, I absolutely love.  For a little larger pic of the front of the lunch  box, click here. The bottom of the lunch box has the url on it starbuckscoffeegear.com, so perhaps some of you can get one of these too (though you have to be a Starbucks partner to log in on that site. Since, I cannot log in to that site, I do not know if the lunchboxes are currently available through it). For a pic of the bottom of the box, click here.

**The ugly orange coffee mug:

In the very early 1990s I can remember walking into my local OakTree neighborhood Starbucks, and seeing some orange coffee mugs for sale with a gold logo. I can remember thinking, “oh my god those are ugly, who would ever buy that?” I went back to the mug several times, picking it up, putting it back on the shelf, tempted to buy it just because I thought it was such a hideous mug that it was calling out to me. Of course, in 1991 – 1992 I simply didn’t realize that Starbucks would be a big company, and never once occured to me that I should buy things and hold on to them.  So mostly during this era of Starbucks, I didn’t buy much and I didn’t hold on to much, which I now regret. Years later, in about 2006 or maybe 2007, I was browsing e-bay and saw an orange coffee mug for sale, and of course I said, “Holy Verona Batman!! It’s the same damn ugly orange coffee mug.” I snatched up the mug from ebay (paying four times what it would’ve cost me to buy it in 1991), and here is a thumbnail of it:

Orange Starbucks Mug with Logo pre-1992

One thing that is remarkable about the coffee mug is that it uses the Starbucks logo that was used between 1987 and 1992, and in my opinion is the rarest of the logos to find on anything. It is also the logo that I am personally the most sentimental about because it represents the era when I first discovered Starbucks.  For a complete discussion of the evolution of the Starbucks logo, click here.  For a larger pic of the orange coffee mug, click here.

On the topic of Starbucks coffee mugs, there are so many to talk about that I think a person could have an entire blog  just on their mugs. I especially like the series of mugs that featured the coffee postage stamps, but don’t have any photos of those to share at this time (and I only have a few of them). One mug that I particularly like has a nice stylized Siren on it, but oddly the mug does not say the word “Starbucks” anywhere on it. The logo on the mug is the same logo featured on the green splash sticks in the stores. Here is a thumbnail of the mug: For a larger pic of this mug, click here.

Starbucks new Siren logo mug

**Starbucks related t-shirts:

Clover T-shirt thumbnail size

I have a couple of t-shirts that I especially like because of the logos they feature. I have a Starbucks V2V “Do Good-er” t-shirt given to me by an SSC partner, but no photo of it to show off here. At 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea they sell logo t-shirts with their logo on them and so of course I picked up one of those right away.  Click here for a pic of the 15th Avenue Coffee t-shirt. Something I’m even more sentimental about is my Clover coffee t-shirt. Big thank yous to the Starbucks partner who got one for me! For pic of the Clover coffee t-shirt, click here.  I realize there have been a million Starbucks t-shirts and I only have a like 3 of them. I’ve seen baristas wearing Vivanno t-shirts, Sorbetto t-shirts, t-shirts with sign-language hands on them … There are a lot of Starbucks t-shirts!

By the way, I would love to get my hands on a Sorbetto t-shirt for my collection, if anyone should happen to know how I could best do that.

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Please feel free to post in the comments anything about your favorite Starbucks collectibles, or anything else related to this blog or Starbucks.  This blog is really quite new and so I am very open to suggestions and ideas about topics, what works and what doesn’t, etc …

Thank you to Larry Aldrich of Seattle Custom Framing for taking all of the photographs featured in this blog entry.

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Also don’t miss the Starbucks Gossip blog run by Webmaster-Jim! http://starbucksgossip.typepad.com – I don’t think I can compete with him!

The parking lot of the SSC

I want to know if who could possibly have a more kick-in-the-pants fun job than Brad Nelson?  For those who don’t know, Brad is the voice of the @Starbucks twitter profile, as well as tweeting via @StarbucksLive.  Today there was a Via “Pep Rally” at the Starbucks headquarters (affectionately also known as “the SSC”, Starbucks Support Center). A small crowd of Starbucks employees gathered in the parking lot in front of the SSC, along with a small mix of media folks, and visitors to hear the University of Washington Marching Band play, and to listen to a few speakers. Then Brad Nelson and Erin Foley drove off in an orange car together, off to proselytize the good news of Via Ready Brew. Melody thinks the Fuller Brush-man invented this style of promoting wares, but in 2009 it is still a timeless thing to do. Brad took a photo of the kickoff event – Click here for his pic.

Brad and Erin are spending two weeks on the road, starting today in Seattle, heading north to Vancouver, then eastward, and ending up in New York on the national Starbucks Via launch day, September 29, 2009. They’ll be making plenty of stops along the way, and likely creating Via converts along the way. What a cool thing to do.

Why am I writing about this? Lordy, I must be a little jealous.

Tazo Full Leaf Tea Menu

Recently I had a conversation with a barista where she related to me that she wished that Starbucks sold whole leaf tea in their stores. I mentioned to her that Starbucks did do a test of whole leaf tea in a few stores in 2008.  After more conversation about Tazo, I mentioned that there had been a whole leaf tea menu in those test stores, and that I still had a couple of old menus floating around somewhere.  The Starbucks Barista said that she’d be interested in seeing them.  So this short blog entry is for you, my barista friend, and for anyone else curious about that menu from the full leaf tea test.  (The left edge of the tea menu has the words “tea is a prism that colors each day” and the card is printed an off-white heavy card stock).

Click here for an image of the front side of the Tazo Full Leaf Tea menu card.

Click here for an image of the back side of the Tazo Full Leaf Tea menu card.

Many thank yous to my friend Larry Aldrich of Seattle Custom Framing who took the photos for me.

Edit on 10-2-2009:  I am hearing gossip that full leaf tea is coming to Starbucks in January 2010.  Does anyone know any more?

A view of 15th Ave. Coffee with a store full of people. Photo by SmooveBCoffee - see blog for more info

On July 24, 2009 Starbucks opened to the world a non-branded concept store at 328 15^th Avenue East in Seattle.  I got up early that morning and wanted to get in right away to see it.  When Starbucks opens a new concept store, for me, the experience is akin to the anticipation of awaiting a sequel in a series you know you already enjoy. What will happen to Harry Potter in his sixth year at Hogwarts?  What will Starbucks dream up next for a concept store?

For those of you wanting to dive a little more deeply into this brave new adventure, you can follow 15^th Avenue Coffee and Tea on twitter.

Previously, that location had been a Starbucks and so of course it had its own store page on V2V.  And I absolutely recommend having a look at the “multimedia” link on that page. I uploaded a series of photos of the store, some of which I took myself, and some from the generosity of others.  (In addition, I particularly like the photo of 15th Avenue Coffee accompanying this post.  The copyright holder is a guy who tweets as SmooveBCoffee, and also has a coffee blog with an entry on the store.)

So on opening day in July, I waited for the store to open and managed to be person #2 in the door.  Once inside, I found a quiet corner to plop in and get a good look of the store.  The seating is old-fashioned folding hardwood seats.  Aesthetically they’re lovely, but not really the comfy seating that Starbucks is known for.  Juan Valdez, a Starbucks Gossip columnist, can’t write “From the Comfy Chair” but rather it would be “From the Coffeehouse Seating Equivalent of Stadium Seating”.

The pastries are from Essential Baking Company.  Unfortunately, there is no refrigerator so one can choose from white-flour and sugar products primarily, and for other options there are limited choices.  A cheese quiche or broccoli quiche are also available.  It is surprising for me to say, but I think a regular Starbucks offers more food variety than 15^th Avenue Coffee and Tea.

The whole bean coffee offerings are exquisite.  There is always something rare and unique to the store that simply can’t be found easily elsewhere.  If a customer wants brewed coffee with a filter method, the choice is a “pour over” cup of coffee, otherwise the Clover brewing method is the main option.  Of course the great advantage of the “pour over” brew method is that its flavor is like brewed coffee, but each person can get his or her choice of coffee beans freshly brewed for him or her.  Major Cohen, project manager for the Seattle non-branded concept locations, tries to find rare internationally available Starbucks beans that would never be found at a regular Starbucks, so I hear.  Thus, the store has had available a Brasil blend of beans which can only be found in a Starbucks in Brazil, and a Puerto Rico blend only found overseas as well.

Turning back to July 24^th, Arthur Rubinfeld, president of Global Development, was there that morning checking the place out, and I also saw Cliff Burrows meandering around the place too.  Starbucks partners abounded.  I chatted briefly with Mr. Rubinfeld about store design.  Given that it was 6-something in the morning, and I was tired, I doubt it was even a coherent conversation.  On the topic of store design, the lights in 15^th Avenue Coffee are well worth noticing.  After visiting a couple of times, it dawned on me that the ceiling lighting was copied exactly in style from the Starbucks at 1912 Pike Place.

I’ve been back to 15^th Avenue Coffee many times, at a variety of hours of the day.  I’ve gone to numerous cuppings, including two tea cuppings in the mix.  The coffee enthusiasm in that store is far more genuine that what’s happening at a typical Starbucks.  I am sure many of us have had the experience of meeting someone who is a Black Apron Starbucks Coffee Master who says “I don’t like coffee”.  I encountered that recently and said, “but you’re a coffee master” to which she replied, “you only need to know about coffee to be a coffee master”.  I’ve gone back as much as I reasonably can, though in reality that neighborhood of Seattle is not convenient to my home and work.

Personally, I wish they had plopped 15^th Avenue Coffee and Tea in the exact spot that one currently finds the Starbucks at First and Pike (aka the Heritage Starbucks).  That store would have shined in that location, had less competition for the coffee dollar from independent coffeehouses, and selfishly, would be a far better location for me to regularly visit it.  I can still hope for an Oz-like tornado to help make my dream come true.  Additionally, if the store had been situated at First and Pike, it would eliminate the current (and perpetual) confusion tourists have when they arrive at First & Pike, see a brown siren logo, and think they’ve reach the original Starbucks, not realizing that they reached a concept store opened March 13, 2009.

Will the concept store be a success?  I hope so.  I think it has all the right magic, but at least from what I can see, it is getting a slowish start in developing a loyal fan-base.  The people inside are personable, and real, and the design is a medley of concept stores (reclaimed wood table and furnishings) and 1912 Pike Place inspiration (lights copied from original store, and a manual espresso machine).  One of the major criticisms of the store has been that it is essentially contrived as an indy-style  coffeehouse; If one is already well acquainted with other concept stores, and the store at Pike Place, 15^th Avenue Coffee’s  interior design appears to be in logical sequence as the latest episode of the concept store novel.

Perhaps the next concept store will borrow themes from the wood display encasement at 1912 Pike Place (below the registers, display cases) showing the various beans available with engraved coffee names, and prominently displaying a variety of roasts. (Here is a small picture of the interior of the original Starbucks. Underneath the register area one can see wood coffee bins with angled customer-facing glass displays. Though not visible in that picture, each coffee’s name is engraved in wood underneath its display. Likely, once a upon a time, the coffee bins served a vibrant purpose when the store made all its revenue from whole bean coffee.  The copyright holder for the Pike Place Starbucks picture is Lisa Suender.)

Vanilla Honey Signage

Since this summer, Starbucks has been testing the waters on two new varieties of Vivanno™:  Mixed Berry and Vanilla Honey.

This test currently is in Sacramento only, and it appears that the first place to break the news was a Sacramento food blog.

This past weekend I had the chance to try the Vanilla Honey and so I wanted to write about it right away.  This has a wonderful cold tangy flavor to it and those who remember Sorbetto might even compare it to the tangy-goodness of the plain yogurt variety of Sorbetto.  Sorbetto, sadly, never made it out of the test phase as reported by Coffee City blog of the Seattle Times.

Sorbetto, just to catch everyone up to speed, was a dessert-like treat sold in a ten ounce size only, and came in two basic varieties Pinkberry and a basic Tangy Yogurt.  It was tested briefly in Snohomish County, Washington, and then launched as just a regional test in Southern California.  And then, it died.  The Sorbetto was a delicious product but expensive for a 10 ounce serving, and required dispensing from a huge machine that looked like a slurpee type machine.  Baristas often said that cleaning this machine was time consuming.  It’s not surprising that Sorbetto died, despite that it was delicious: It was an expensive product right when a recession started, and didn’t appear to fit in with a coffeehouse at all.

The reason I take us back in time to the Sorbetto is that the first thing I thought of when I tried the Vanilla Honey was Sorbetto.  There is an incredible similarity in flavor of the yogurt.  The Vivanno™, like all other Vivanno™, is available only in a 16 ounce size.  My take on this:  Utterly delicious!! I am ready now for this to come to Seattle.  A yogurt and honey flavor is a combo that I really like and I thoroughly enjoy the sweet but not too sweet tangy yogurt flavor of this new Vivanno™.  It doesn’t taste like a dessert either.  The Sorbetto had almost a soft ice-cream texture, but the new Vivanno™has the right texture of a smoothie.  The honey was drizzled on top, and mixed throughout the beverage.  Those customers who like the sensation of drinking extra caramel through a straw in a Frappuccino, will enjoy the fact that the honey is mixed all throughout the drink.  Starbucks also has hit the right balance between the amount of honey and the amount of yogurt.

Please Starbucks bring this one to Seattle and everywhere!  There are no unsightly tall special machines for this item.  It’s truly a smoothie – The barista throws a few things in a blender, and soon there is a delicious treat!

Welcome to Melody’s personal blog about Starbucks, and more generally coffee.  Not sure yet what all I’ll be doing with this space but I hope you stop by now and then to see if any new writings have been scribbled here.  No matter what I do, the king of Starbucks’ blogs is still Jim Romenesko who maintains Starbucks Gossip.