The Big Debate: Festive Drinks- Costa vs. Starbucks

I've heard so much recently about the re arrival of the festive drink. Seriously, to me, you can't have Christmas without some kind of drink made to cater for the season, as I found out last year.

This year, the Festive Drinks are back and now there is competition. Everywhere I go is see new types of festive drinks on sale in smaller coffee shops on the highstreet...Cafe Nero with their Cinnamon Hot Chocolate to name one.

However for me its ALWAYS been about Starbucks and Costa, who have always been threats to one another since I can remember.
So to make it fair, I visted both coffee houses just to get a little taste ( really I cant decided which is truely better with one coffee from both but it'll give you the idea)

STARBUCKS

Seriously, because I am a Starbucker but a Costarian (haha) I could be more bias. After a two hour lesson I hurried into the town to get my first festive drink of the year. This year they have a new festive drink called Praline Mocha, which is a ''warm bittersweet chocolate infused with the flavour of hazelnut combined with espresso and steamed milk; finished with whipped cream and drizzled with mocha sauce.''

I decided to get the 'grande' ( I usually get the 'Venti' , which is the biggest, but I wasn't too sure in case I didn't like it.
This came to £3:30 with whipped cream.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

It looked good and smelt delicious, kind of like Kinder Bueno, which is my favourite chocolate so I was excited.

On first taste it was a really nice sutle sweet taste and you get the mocha taste first. Then the praline comes in and to be honest it is very bitter like. Unfortuantely, it leaves a really weird taste in your mouth and I had to buy water to wash it down. Eventaully I threw away half the cup.

COSTA
So, I went to Costa today( never stepped inside Costa to actually BUY in my life) I went to the university branch and ordered the Frosted Mint Hot Chocolate. I've just looke don the Costa website and I can't find the drink anywhere for a description and I found that Costa actually stopped selling th drink for a while- maybe my uni got lucky?

This came to £3.00 with cream and I picked up a 'medium'. As you can see the syrup costs 50p but the actual hot chocolate was £2.50

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

Again, the drink smelt really good in a nice warm sickly warm. The cream was slightly deflated compared to Starbucks but I wasn't that fussed.

The taste in a nutshell is a warm and milder version of After 8's. It was lush. Added to the cream it was like Christmas all at once- I was soo shocked and v. disappointed when the last drop was gone.

So Costa was cheaper even though the drink was not a coffee, which retails more expensive. I preferred the Peppermint Hot Chocolate. I'm honestly sad that I didn't like Starbucks new festive, but I may just have to stick to Gingerbread Mocha from now on.

-Peace