Two new beverages are ready to take green tea sweets to unexplored areas of your palate.
With matcha treats being such a prevalent part of the Japanese dessert scene, it might be surprising to know that green tea-flavored sweets are a pretty recent trend. Sure, green tea ice cream has been around for a long time, but most of the matcha snacks and beverages for sale in Japan only got started within the past decade or so.
Cafes and confectioners mixing matcha with other flavors is an even newer innovation. If wasn’t until a couple of years ago that people really caught on to how delicious matcha and white chocolate are together, for example, and so Starbucks is ready to blaze a new trail with some bold matcha flavor pairings.
First up is the Matcha & Fruity Mascarpone Frappuccino. While matcha tea and mascarpone aren’t a completely unprecedented combination (we encountered it during our taste test of an edible Japanese garden), this is Starbucks’ first time to combine green tea and cheese flavors in the same beverage, with the mascarpone also having Muscat grape notes. The Frappuccino also has raisins blended into its matcha base and is topped with matcha-infused whipped cream.
Starbucks Japan generally likes to debut new beverages as a set with both hot and cold offerings, and this time the hot role is filled by the Matcha Fruity Blend Tea Latte. The flavor promises to be complex, with green tea, milk, two kinds of Japanes citrus fruits (yuzu and kabosu), almond paste, and even komatsuna (Japanese mustard spinach) on the ingredient list. Starbucks boasts that the drink embodies the heretofore unnoticed compatibility of matcha with fruits, nuts, and vegetables, although as a concession to those who still want their sweet tooth satisfied the beverage has a topping of matcha chocolate shavings.
Prices start at 580 yen (US$5.20) for a tall Matcha & Fruity Mascarpone Frappuccino and 430 yen for a short Matcha Fruity Blend Tea Latte. Most Starbucks locations will start selling the new beverages from December 26, but from December 24 good little girls and boys who head to select branches in Tokyo (Tokyu Plaza Omotesado Harajuku), Yokohama (Yokohama Station West Exit), Kyoto (Kyoto Porta), Osaka (Lucua 1100), Sapporo (Sapporo Stellar Place Center), Sendai (S Pal), Nagoya (Meitetsu Department Store Nagoya), Kobe (Kobe Kokusai Kaikan SOL), Hiroshima (Hondori), and Fukuoka (Media Mall Tenjin) can try them two days earlier than the rest of the country. Both beverages will be on sale until January 23.
Related: Starbucks Japan location finder
Source: Starbucks via Entabe
Images: Starbucks