Viva la Via

It was doomed from the start.

Starbucks... now, I love me some Starbucks, I really do, lots of people take issue with them, but I worked there in NYC and pretty much had a good experience and they do a lot of philanthropic things and treat their employees decently and damn I love the coffee. (Which may explain that run-on sentence after a few cups this morning.)

But Starbucks came out with Instant Coffee. Do I hate instant coffee? No. I don't drink a lot of it but I have nothing really against it. Hell, I've added instant coffee to my coffee. Yeah I'm just that hooked. What I hate is that they felt the need to put their instant coffee in single serve convenient packs. Of plastic something material. So it's convenient.

With that in mind, I would never have purchased Via to try on my own. But they put a sample on their pound-bags of coffee, so that we may be hooked by its convenience. So I gave it a try, as it came on the pound-bag of coffee we bought for our French press. It's the fair thing to do.

Back to the first statement, though... it was doomed from the start. I must have had it in for myself. I spilled a little of the coffee while opening the packet. The teapot splorged boiling water everywhere when I poured it into the cup. The agave syrup splooshed everywhere and gave me the stickies the rest of the day because it got everywhere around my mug before I realized it. I splashed the coffee out just stirring it. (This was after I DID have coffee previously, so we can't blame it on that.)

While that may have had an effect on my experience, I'll attempt to be objective. Was it delicious? Sure. It was. Better than most other instants? Probably. Is it worth it? Absolutely not. Do we need pre-packaged little bits of instant coffee in ours lives? Nope. These are no better than those stupid plastic pods of coffee that are STILL all the rage (and still causing me rage).

This is definitely a to-avoid product.

Now, if you don't mind, my French press awaits...