Who wins the Starbucks v Costa Gingerbread Latte battle?
There are mainly two coffee shops that line nearly every high street in the UK, the caffeine powerhouses known as Starbucks and Costa.
Every year they bring their festive food and drinks for the winter period, a popular contender being the gingerbread latte.
We decided to try and settle the debate of which is better once and for all, and duly bought ourselves two medium gingerbread lattes.
Starbucks
Right off the bat Starbucks often gets a bad wrap for their prices but we paid just £3.60 for our treat which was a surprise, although it’s still cheaper to make your own at home.
It was slightly disappointing to receive the standard takeaway cup, even though we were drinking in, but this wasn’t the end of the world.
From the first sip of Starbucks’ gingerbread latte you will get a creamy surprise bursting with flavour and sweetness… Possibly too sweet.
With 34.2g of sugar in each one of these festive treats you will be bouncing off the walls for hours, let alone the 113mg of caffeine! Definitely not one to have everyday.
Adults need roughly 2000 calories a day and this drink will very much help you achieve that coming at 315 calories.
The flavour is strong with a standard four pumps of ‘gingerbread’ syrup. Although we would argue that the artificial gingerbread flavour is slightly off.
The flavour is quite nutty rather than gingerbread with a hint of ginger in the aftertaste, this is no complaint though! Rest assured it is tasty but might be disappointing to you hardcore gingerbread fans.
Costa
A very nice touch with this Costa drink is that you get an adorable little gingerbread man sitting on top of your drink who is as tasty as he is cute. Not quite cute enough to charge £4.00 though.
So right from the start the presentation of this drink had the leg up on Starbucks.
Much like Starbucks’ rendition of the gingerbread latte, you will be greeted by a creamy taste and texture but not quite as sweet – which was nice as the sweetness from Starbucks can be a bit much.
Unsurprisingly this gingerbread latte had just 13.9g of sugar, almost 1/3 compared to the one we drank at Starbucks. We couldn’t find any data or information about how much caffeine was in our drink sadly.
If you are watching your calories and fancy this sweet drink, Costa might be the choice for you, with just 280 calories.
It was quite noticeable that the flavor was quite weak, possibly even too weak in flavor, especially compared to Starbucks, which was slightly disappointing.
However, it did have that kick of ginger in the aftertaste.
It would appear that Costa use a similar syrup for this special latte that has a clear artificial ‘gingerbread’ flavour which is very similar to starbucks.
So, which one is better?
If you love your coffee sweet and strong then Starbucks is for you!
However, we found Starbucks’ rendition to be ever so slightly overwhelming and unhealthy despite it tasting great and strong in flavour.
The neat presentation of Costa’s gingerbread latte and the fact that it isn’t as sweet does put it ahead of Starbucks.
We believe paying a little more for Costa’s version is well worth it, as you get a little gingerbread man and a sit in mug as well.
