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Starbucks Japan’s first pineapple Frappuccino, Go Pineapple, should be the Gorogoro Pineapple

Casey Baseel Aug 5, 2021
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Taste-testing Starbucks Japan’s first-ever pineapple dessert drink, plus its peachy companion.

As sweets fans and loyal SoraNews24 readers know, Starbucks Japan releases a lot of seasonal Frappuccino flavors. Back in June they rolled out 47 new varieties of the dessert drink at once, so it’s a little shocking to realize that there’s one widely popular fruit that’s never served as a Frappuccino until now.

That fruit is pineapple, and so as soon as the Go Pineapple Frappuccino went on sale Wednesday our Frappuccino fan reporter K. Masami made her way to her local Starbucks to try it for herself.

The Go Pineapple’s fruit flavor isn’t its only noteworthy element, though. Whereas most Frappuccinos are either cream or coffee-based, the Go Pineapple is water-based. While there’s a certain comfort to the filling sensation of a heavier cream drink or a caffeine jolt from a coffee one, with Japan in the midst of an intense summer heat wave a slushy and hydrating fruit drink sounded great to Masami, especially since she felt like 50 percent of the water in her body had evaporated on her walk to Starbucks.

The Go Pineapple keeps its ingredient list short and pure, with pieces of pineapple fruit and pineapple sauce going into the cup and a whipped cream topping. Giving it a stir, Masami thought that maybe it should be called the Gorogoro (Japanese for “thick”) Pineapple Frappuccino instead, since there’s a ton of fruit here. Sometimes the texture almost felt like she was eating the Go Pineapple instead of drinking it, but regardless of how you classify the consumption, this is a delicious addition to the menu. It manages to be balanced between tart and sweet without suppressing either flavor, letting both dance on your taste buds before a clean, refreshing finish.

▼ The Starbucks selfie is, of course, an integral part of the Frappuccino taste-testing process.

While she was there, Masami also decided to try out the Go Pineapple’s companion drink, the Go Peach Frappuccino.

Unlike pineapple, peach isn’t an unprecedented Japanese Frappuccino flavor, as it showed up for limited times in 2019’s Peach on the Beach and last year’s Juicy Peach Frappuccinos.

Still, it’s been a while since the fruit got the Frappuccino treatment, and the reunion is a happy one, with as much flavor as grabbing a peach in your hand and taking a big bite of the fruit. Following the same plan as the Go Pineapple, the Go Peach Frappuccino is water-based and made with peach fruit, peach syrup, and whipped cream on top.

Swirling everything together gave it a richer, milkier flavor than with the Go Pineapple, since the Go Peach doesn’t have any tartness to undercut its sweetness.

Usually, Starbucks Japan bringing out two great Frappuccinos at once is both a blessing and a curse, since they’re often only available for very limited times. In the case of the Go Pineapple and Peach, though, they’ll be sticking around until September 21, priced at 693 yen (US$6.30), so that fans can slowly sip them all summer long.

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