Very Delta: A Holiday Taste Test With Very Little Holiday Cheer
Do you love sweet holiday drinks? Well, you might be very Delta. Emmy Award-winning drag performer and podcast host Delta Work takes on three Starbucks holiday beverages in a gloriously candid taste test, and the results are not quite as merry as the menu might suggest. The RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 3 alum earned a 2018 Primetime Emmy for her hairstyling work on the series. A caramel apple concoction unexpectedly comes out on top, while a sugar cookie matcha inspires one of her most colorful critiques.
Starbucks kicked off its 2026 holiday menu on November 5, bringing back seasonal favorites alongside new drinks. Delta samples a caramel version of the Snowy Apple Drink, an iced gingerbread chai and an iced sugar cookie cream matcha. The real entertainment, however, is her increasingly imaginative vocabulary for describing each sip.
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The Caramel Snowy Apple Drink: The Unexpected Winner
First up, the iced caramel snowy apple drink. But before Delta even takes a sip, Starbucks’ sizing is already under scrutiny. “Isn’t grande grand? Like this is supposed to be like the grand size,” she says. “There’s nothing grand about that.”
Inspecting her beverage, she notices a hint of green — or, as she jokes, perhaps it’s just the fungus in her eyes. Once she tastes it, the green apple comes through loud and clear, with caramel taking a back seat to the milky flavor. It’s cute, it’s safe, it’s average. In Delta’s estimation, it is a beverage that stays in its lane and has absolutely no intention of creating a scene.
And who exactly is this drink for? “The woman who doesn’t mind finishing her kids’ drink in a minivan.”
Iced Gingerbread Chai: Where Is the Spice?
Delta loves chai and gingerbread, so naturally she expects the iced gingerbread chai to be thee winner. A sip of each drink later, however, she finds herself doing an unexpected about-face: the apple is better. Where is the spicy punch she was promised by the combination?
She recalls watching people prepare a huge roast in a crock-pot, only to give the pepper grinder a halfhearted turn. “Where is that pepper going to go?” she asks. That’s precisely her problem with the chai: there’s a little warmth, but where is the body, the layering, the seasoning?
What follows is practically a Christmas sermon. Gingerbread and chai should conjure the mystery of the season for Delta: something celestial and mystical, the warmth of hibernating indoors and the sensation of putting your face out into the winter cold. “I think it’s missing its mystery.” This is a woman asking for a little seasonal magic, not merely a hint of cinnamon.
In fact, she suggests that the gingerbread chai has served a different purpose altogether: like a coffee bean cleansing her palate, it has made the apple drink taste even better. Her assessment of the chai’s intended audience? “The woman who likes a whisper of flavor.”
Sugar Cookie Cream Matcha: Delta Meets Her Match
Delta makes her bias known immediately: she does not like matcha. “I do not like licking underneath the lawn mower.” She wonders aloud whether some people genuinely love the stuff or simply enjoy the idea that they’re doing something wonderful for their bodies. As a cilantro lover, she allows that she might simply be one of those people whose taste buds interpret matcha as a weed whacker.
Still, she gives the sugar cookie a fair chance. Perhaps the sweetness will mellow out that intensely green flavor, just as a squeeze of citrus can cut through a rich dish. She takes a sip. A moment later, the verdict arrives: “That’s the worst drink I’ve ever had in my life.”
“I taste the effort,” Delta concedes, detecting a little vanilla valiantly attempting to compete with the matcha. She likens the experience to forcing down a dreadful protein shake because it’s supposedly good for you. If somebody promised her 39 grams of protein and four hours of fullness, she might order it. Unfortunately, that is not what this sugar cookie drink is promising her.
The tasting notes become increasingly outrageous. Imagine the green husks discarded by shoppers peeling ears of corn at the supermarket, whizzed up in a Magic Bullet. Add a little weed residue, then consider what it might be like to lick the bottom of an aquarium. Delta even demonstrates the peculiar sensation the drink leaves on her tongue.
And then the tasting takes an existential turn. “There’s something about it that’s like prehistoric in a way.” She muses that the drink is somehow connected to the land, perhaps capable of transporting its drinker to another plane of existence. Could this be the mystical experience she had been searching for in the gingerbread chai? Apparently, the mystery of Christmas was hiding in the wrong cup!
Her recommendation? “The iced sugar cookie cream matcha is for the person who loves licking gardening tools.”
Delta’s Final Verdict
Delta doesn’t love any of the three, but the caramel snowy apple drink wins. Before she wraps up, however, she has a few more choice words for the competition. The gingerbread chai, she explains, tastes like kissing somebody who has just had one. Then she decides even that is too generous: imagine somebody finishing their chai, refilling the unwashed cup with water and handing it to you. That is how faint the flavor is.
As for the matcha, the sugar cookie barely registers. Delta compares it to drinking matcha after eating a sugar cookie earlier, with a little of the cookie still stuck in your teeth. The apple, by contrast, is the most cohesive of the three, even if it is decidedly milky.
After nearly 15 minutes of seasonal beverage philosophizing, Delta would rather order an iced coffee — even if she had to drink it black. And in true Very Delta fashion, she leaves us with: “Do you want to see me take a break? ’Cause I think you want to see me take a break.”
Delta Work Taste Tests Three Starbucks Holiday Drinks
Sources: Delta Work — Go Off, Delta! holiday drink tasting; Starbucks 2026 holiday menu; Television Academy.
