Starbucks Japan closes out the year with luxurious and innovative dessert drinks for the most Japanese holiday season of the year.

Unlike some other countries in Asia, Japan doesn’t really celebrate the lunar New Year. Instead, Japan follows the same custom as most of the western world, with New Year’s Eve celebrations on December 31, and the first three days of the January traditionally considered the New Year’s season.

However, in Japan New Year’s, or Oshogatsu, as it’s called in Japanese, is still a very, very Japanese celebration. While things are pretty western/internationalized at Christmas, Oshogatsu decorations lean very much into traditional Japanese imagery, with auspicious motifs like Mt. Fuji, folding fans, and cranes adorning New Year’s cards, stores and shopping streets playing koto music, and people dressing in kimono for their first shrine or temple visit of the New Year.

So in keeping with that, later this month Starbucks Japan is releasing a very, very Japanese-tasting Frappuccino as 2025 winds down.

Not only is the final Frappuccino for the year a green tea one, it goes beyond just plain old mathca with the inclusion of gyokuro. Gyokuro is a premium grade of matcha, made from leaves grown under shades to protect them from the harshening effects of strong sunlight in the weeks before they’re picked, leading to a deeper flavor with a subtle sweetness, a more robust aroma, and a vibrant green color. Harvested just once a year in late spring. less than one percent of the tea grown in Japan is gyokuro, and as such it commands high prices.

Starbucks Japan’s new Gyokuro Matcha Frappuccino has a base of gyokuro-enhanced matcha, and at the bottom of the glass, waiting for you to stir it in, is a large dollop of smooth matcha an (sweet bean paste). The topping is green tea-flavored too, matcha whipped cream sprinkled with crisp bits of crumbled matcha feuilletine crepe.

Joining the Gyokuro Matcha Frappuccino on the Starbucks menu will be a Gyokuro Matcha Latte (shown on the left in the photo above), a mixture of gyokuro and steamed milk that also gets matcha whipped cream and feuilletine, but does without the matcha an.

Starbucks has one more special Oshogatsu beverage on the way, and while it doesn’t have any gyokuro or matcha in it, it’s got another unique ingredient that’s also undeniably Japanese: koji.

The Honey Ginger Rice Koji Latte makes use of Starbucks’ newest plant-based milk, made from Japanese-grown rice koji. What’s koji? It’s a kind of mold that triggers fermentation in rice, but don’t run away/wretch just yet! Koji is harmless, and it’s actually one of the key ingredients in making sake. Starbucks has also figured out how to use it to make a dairy substitute, and the Honey Ginger Rice Koji Milk Latte is a combination of rice koji milk, made from domestically grown Japanese rice, and blond espresso, with a whipped cream swirl on top sprinkled with pieces of honey-treated ginger. The result, Starbucks says, is a drink with a gentle yet comfortingly sweetness, and also one that’s perfect for sipping on in cold winter weather, as ginger is traditionally thought to have a warming effect on the body in Japan.

The Gyokuro Matcha Frappuccino and Gyokuro Matcha Latte will be offered in tall sizes only, priced at 700 yen (US$4.60) and 650 yen, respectively. The Honey Ginger Rice Koji Milk Latte is also 650 yen for a tall, but can also be had as a short size for 610 yen.

All three beverages go on sale December 26 and will be available for a limited, unspecified time, but there’ll be at least some availability overlap with Starbucks collaboration with a 166-year-old Kyoto doll maker.

Source, images: Starbucks Japan
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