Ho ho ho, every writer’s shared office space has released their Christmas selection of warm, sugar drinks. I visited a few Starbucks locations around London and sampled their festive latte selection. I’ve yet to try their yuletide hot chocolate offerings as I’d prefer to leave Starbucks not only feeling sick, but to have a shot of coffee for when the sugar crash kicks in.

Gingerbread Latte

According to my brief notes on this cold-staving drink, the Gingerbread Latte tasted like a slightly bitter version of blended Golden Grahams with warm milk. I wish I could say more, but it was a simple as that.

Toffee Nut Latte

The Toffee Nut Latte latte was rich with cream, although this was probably because this was the only one that had whipped cream on top despite my asking for the other two. Beneath and despite the creaminess, the toffee taste was synthetic as if in the Starbucks’ R&D division they asked an android to recreate the flavour of toffee after having it search Google for the description. It was sickeningly sweet as with every other drink on this list, but quiet nice, in a plastic kind of way.

Eggnog Latte

This warm cup of stuff smelled like burned recycling layered with Avon budget perfume. – it chemically singed the inside of my head. Maybe it had disabled my inhibitors for a short while (I have since stopped myself from washing up the dishes), but despite my disliking for eggnog, I figuratively dived right in. The Eggnog Latte’s taste wrote itself down in my mind’s notepad, reading thusly; warm lager foam pushed through burned coffee grounds mixed with bags of sugar. I persisted on and the last two mouthfuls were like a simultaneously warm and cold, phlegmatic mix of sweet and sour sauce, cinnamon, and MSG.