Photo by Analyn Cuarto
A pumpkin spice blend for every taste!
By Jerrison Oracion, Senior Columnist
October is the magical time when all of the pumpkin spice flavours are available in many coffee places.
It all began when Starbucks offered their Pumpkin Spice Latte. Because of the success of the drink, various coffee places began offering their own drinks that feature pumpkin spice. I decided to find out what the differences are between the drinks.
This year, I tried three popular Vancouver coffee places that offered pumpkin spice drinks: Starbucks, Tim Hortons, and Blenz Coffee. Starbucks’s signature drink has all of the taste of pumpkin in a latte. The cream in it causes the drink to be very milky, and the cinnamon adds a kick to it. The latte tastes delicious and it features all the flavours of fall.
Tim Hortons is the most recent coffee place to offer a pumpkin spice drink. Their version is their Perfectly Uncomplicated Latte with pumpkin spice. It’s the perfect shade of pumpkin orange. The latte is great when drinking it with their Pumpkin Spice Muffin, which has a cream cheese filling that tastes very rich and creamy. When eating it with the muffin, you get the best of all the pumpkin flavour that Tim Hortons has to offer.
Blenz Coffee has another type of pumpkin spice drink called the Pumpkin Pie Caramel Macchiato. It is a macchiato with caramel and crumble on top. When I drank it, it did not taste like pumpkin pie. It tasted more like coffee and caramel because there is a lot of caramel in the latte. But, it does have the crunch of pumpkin pie and the caramel is very sweet. Proceeds from the sale of the latte will go towards the Canadian Cancer Society which Blenz Coffee is raising money for this month.
Overall, Starbucks and Tim Hortons’s lattes have everything that you would expect in a pumpkin spice latte, but Blenz Coffee’s macchiato doesn’t quite hit the mark. Depending on your taste buds, there is a pumpkin spice drink for everyone!
