Product Review: Gingerbread Chai Latte from Coffee Revolution

coffeerevolutionlogoProduct Information:

Where to Buy:  If you live in Vancouver, WA:  Coffee Revolution.

Taster’s Review:

As I’ve said before, I don’t stop in to my local coffee shop(s) often.  Here in Vancouver, Washington – and pretty much anywhere in the Pacific Northwest – there’s a coffee shop at street corner, it seems.  My husband and I often joke at the number of Starbucks that there are.  If you happen to pass by a Starbucks, you don’ t need to turn around and go back, just keep going and there will be another one coming up on the next street corner.  In Portland, I understand there’s a Starbucks inside a Starbucks.

So I was less than impressed a couple of years ago when Coffee Revolution appeared in Vancouver at a location not far from my house.  I don’t usually go to the coffee shop, why would I go to this one?

But they hooked me in with their fancy digital billboard sign outside of their shop.  It beckoned to me:  Gingerbread Chai.  How do I resist that?

As it turns out, I wish I would have.  Essentially, this is the original Oregon Chai concentrate that’s been enhanced with Gingerbread flavored syrup.  The result:  an overly sweet concoction that tasted like gingerbread (with gobs of extra icing).

Yeah, I taste the chai.  I don’t really taste much of the ‘black tea’ that is supposed to be in the Oregon Chai concentrate.  When I’ve tried this brand of chai concentrate in the past, I didn’t taste the black tea either, so it’s not the sickeningly sweet gingerbread syrup’s fault that I can’t taste the tea.  It’s the concentrate’s fault.

The good:  I can taste the gingerbread.  If this were not as sweet, I’d be a lot more pleased with it though.  As it is, it’s just too sweet.  It’s cloying.  It’s so sweet that if I were a diabetic, I’d be worried about diabetic coma at this point.

On another note, I do feel bad.  Because as I was standing there, waiting for the very cheerful barrista to finish with my latte, I’m sure she could see just how disgusted I was that my chai was coming out of a carton.  It wasn’t her fault.  She was just doing her job.  So, if she happens to be reading this, I’m sorry if I came off as a tea snob.  I am, in fact, a tea snob and I don’t apologize for that, but just because I’m a tea snob doesn’t mean that I should be rubbing others the wrong way with it.  Sorry.

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