Trio of chilled sweet seasonal drinks arrives as Japan copes with record heat.

It’s been an extremely hot summer in Japan this year, with the country recording its highest temperature ever just a few days ago. Temperatures have dipped a bit since then, but not by much, so we were very much looking forward to having not one, not two, but three new chilled drinks from Starbucks Japan to taste test and cool off with.

Once again, this solemn duty fell to our resident Frappuccino expert K. Masami, who made her way to Starbucks on August 1 as a trio of peach-flavored beverages were added to the menu.

Collectively called the Three Happy Peaches, Starbucks is continuing the format it used for its Shine Muscat grape series last month, releasing a Frappuccino, a tea, and a soda, each making use of the seasonal fruit, and Masami elected to taste the Heavenly Peach Frappuccino first.

Visually, this is a gorgeous-looking drink, especially when served in glass that lets you appreciate the interplay of colors in the topping of whipped cream with drizzled peach sauce and sprinkling of peach-flavor powder. At the bottom of the glass is quite a bit of chopped white peach pieces, and in between the Frappuccino base itself, made with white peach puree but without any milk.

This mix of ingredients makes for a drink that’s sweet, flavorful, and packed with juicy peach notes, but the milk-less Frappuccino base minimizes oiliness too. So while the flavor is bold, it comes to a clean finish, a combination that means there was really only room for one possible complaint: it all tastes so good that part of Masami wanted to savor it as slowly as possible, but it was so revitalizing on a hot summer day that she wanted to gulp it down with gusto.

That dilemma isn’t the beverage’s fault, though, and Masami feels the Heavenly Peach Frappuccino truly deserves the “Heavenly” part of its name.

Next up, the Craft Juicy Peach Tea. This is the simplest drink in Starbucks’ peach lineup, as it’s a glass of their black tea with chopped white peach, plus ice to keep everything chilled.

There’s nothing wrong with simplicity when it’s staying true to a purpose, though, and the Craft Juicy Peach Tea is wonderfully focused on providing a gentle and relaxing flavor. Starbucks’ black tea is a little on the strong side, but the peach pieces help mellow out some of its bitterness and also add a sweet, fruity zip to the mix that fits in very nicely. Also, out of the three new drinks, the Craft Juicy Peach Tea uses the largest quantity of fruit, as you can easily see when they’re all lined up next to each other, so this is the one to go for if you feel like you can never have too much peach.

▼ Almost half of our Craft Juicy Peach Tea glass was fruit.

The mood often starts to feel bittersweet as Masami approaches the end of her taste tests, but for the final drink in this session the taste was tart and sweet. That’s because the Chillax Soda Peach’s base is made with a green citrus syrup with nearly a dozen flavors, including lime, grapefruit, and lemon, and there’s a lemon slice in the glass too for good measure. There’s still room for the sweetness of the chopped white peach to shine, though, with the fizzy carbonation helping it pop on the taste buds, with the sharp citrus coming on stronger at the end to close off the sensation of each sip, making it Masami’s pick for the most refreshing of the trio.

Honestly, these are all so satisfying that Masami would be happy to drink them throughout the year as regular menu items, but since they make use of seasonal ingredients, we’ll just have to enjoy them as often as we can before summer ends.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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