This white drink being served at the Caffè Veloce chain this winter may look like hot milk, but it’s something else all together — and much sweeter, too!

That’s right, starting December 1, Japanese cafe chain Caffè Veloce will be offering a unique hot beverage made with an unexpected ingredient — a sweet sake drink known as amazake!

The drink, which they’ve called the “White Amazake Latte“, combines a popular brand of amazake (literally, sweet sake) with milk, making it a perfect winter drink.

Amazake is a traditional Japanese sweet drink made from fermented rice that has very low alcohol content and a milky white appearance. It’s actually a beverage that in its earliest form has existed in Japan for over 1,000 years, and in recent years has gained attention as a naturally healthy and nutritious drink. It is typically served hot, and is often consumed in the New Year or on the March 3 Doll Festival (Hina Matsuri) day, but it’s also widely available as a hot canned drink during the winter months.

In this instance, Caffè Veloce collaborated with the best-selling amazake drink in Japan, the Morinaga Amazake, to create their new latte drink with a Japanese twist.

▼ The canned amazake drink from sweets manufacturer Morinaga, which is used in Caffè Veloce’s amazake latte.

According to the description in the press release, the combination of the sweet sake and milk makes for a very creamy and mild drink, resulting in what should be a perfect “comfort drink” for the winter. Because of the amazake, the drink does contain a very small amount of alcohol, but the alcohol content is less than 1 percent.

▼ The white drink certainly looks tempting!

They’ll also be having a special five-day campaign from December 17 to 21, where they’ll give out 1,000 discount coupons for the amazake latte and 20 packages of four freeze-dried Morinaga amazake drinks to Twitter users who follow and retweet tweets from the official Caffè Veloce account (@ChatnoirCo).

The White Amazake Latte will be available at Caffè Veloce locations (except for their Kagurazaka branch) for 280 yen (US$2.50) until the end of February next year, so if you’re in Japan this winter, you may want to try this drink that should warm you and satisfy your sweet tooth as well — because you know you’ll never be short of drinkable sweets in Japan!

Source, images: PR Times