Starbucks Thanksgiving Blend is now an annual fall tradition in the US, Canada (where it’s sold to coincide with the Canadian holiday on the second Monday in October), and as Autumn Blend in the China/Asia Pacific region.
Anthony Carroll, a manager on the Starbucks coffee team, has created hundreds of blends for Starbucks in his 19 years with the company. “Back in 2007,” he said, “we first started to explore the idea of a special coffee for the Thanksgiving holiday. We approached the challenge through a culinary lens and we thought it was a great opportunity to collaborate with award-winning Seattle chef, Tom Douglas.”
Douglas, Carroll and the team settled on a blend of coffees from Guatemala and Sumatra with subtle spice flavour, cocoa notes and hints of herbs.
“When it comes to coffee, it’s commonly thought of as the perfect pairing with dessert,” said Carroll. “Thanksgiving Blend is actually a coffee fit for the whole feast. It’s a coffee that complements all the flavours of the season – the holiday sweets, as well as the savoury, too.”
The team tasted the blend with a Thanksgiving dinner cooked by Douglas at his Palace Kitchen restaurant in downtown Seattle.
“While it went great with the pumpkin pie, it exploded with the turkey,” Douglas said in a 2007 video about the special blend (see below). “The different herbal notes in the turkey really brought out the layers of flavour in the coffee.”
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