World Market's Holiday Eggnog

World Market isn't a chain I'm terribly familiar with. From my only visit to one of their stores, they seem to position themselves as a hip department store that offers a little bit of everything--including their own brand of coffee. Among the flavors they offer are a series of Christmas-themed offerings, and I'm covering one of those in this post today, in celebration of Christmas in July!

 

Christmas in July coffee attire: Sweaters but no socks or pants.

WORLD MARKET COFFEE: HOLIDAY EGGNOG

I love eggnog. I love coffee. During the Christmas Season, I have made my own eggnog-flavored coffee blends for many years (basically, mixing medium-roast coffee with eggnog and sometimes a little rum). If eggnog was available year-round, I'd drink it year-round, probably using it as my primary coffee additive. So whenever I come across an eggnog-flavored coffee blend, it goes to the top of the list of the ones to try!

The package promises a coffee that delivers a creamy eggnog flavor with spicy notes of nutmeg and cinnamon. There was a faint whiff of eggnog as I opened the 2-oz sample pack (I got this blend with four other World Market holiday-themed coffees... and if I'd planned better, I'd have done Christmas in July for this entire month instead of just today), so it looked like we were off to a good start.

As the coffee brewed, there was no detectable aroma other than that of coffee. The same was true as I poured it... and as I initially tried the blend hot and black, it tasted like a slightly sweetened basic, generic coffee. What it didn't taste like was eggnog.

I tried drawing out the flavors by trying the blend first with Unsweetened Almond Milk, then Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk, and finally sugar-free Italian Sweet Cream creamer.

The vanilla almond milk and the creamer successfully brought a weak eggnog flavor to the fore, but the unflavored almond milk did nothing. It didn't seem creamy and there was no spiciness it at all. When consumed hot, this blend was an all-around disappointment. It's not terrible, just bland and uninteresting.

Interestingly, as the Holiday Eggnog blend cooled to room temperature, the eggnog flavor began to emerge, and were particularly noticeable in the cups with the Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk and sugar-free Italian Sweet Cream creamer. TI could even taste the nutmeg... and the drink seemed genuinely creamy with the creamer.

When I tried the blend iced, the results were essentially the same as when I consumed it at room temperature, but with the flavors muted. They weren't quite as faint as they had been when I drank it hot--I could even detect a touch of eggnog flavor when I drank it black--but icing this coffee is not the way to go.

All-in-all, World Market's Holiday Eggnog is not one that I would recommend going out of your way for. If it's handy and you're looking for something mildly sweet to go with dessert after Christmas dinner, then there are worse choices you could make. But there are also better ones. (Perhaps the most interesting thing about this blend is that the eggnog flavor behaves in an almost perfectly opposite of the eggnog-flavored one from Bones Coffee.)