Dunkin' Just Dropped a Purple Sugarplum Macchiato for the Holidays

Holidays are very often times for tradition, even if some of those traditions don't make the cut anymore. Take, for example, two of the most well-known Christmas foods mentioned in story and song: Sugarplums and figgy pudding. While we don't all clamor for some figgy pudding these days, as the carol would suggest, the sugarplums mentioned in Clement Clarke Moore's classic poem A Visit from St. Nicholas have perhaps fared a little better, also garnering their own fairy dance in Tchaikovsky's seasonally-performed ballet The Nutcracker. And now, in a more 2020-style tribute, they're getting their own drink at Dunkin'.

No, those baristas with the green aprons don't have colorful coffee on lock. Starting today, Dunkin' stores nationwide are serving a purple Sugarplum Macchiato for the holidays. Taking advantage of the macchiato's layers of espresso and milk, the chain is adding a dash of violet and some fruit flavor to both hot and iced variations (of course the clear cup of the iced version is probably the more Instagrammable).

Traditionally, however, a "sugar plum" didn't necessarily have anything to do with plums, but rather was a catch-all term for various hard candy spheres and sugar-shelled comfits which, before industrial mechanization, were a labor-intensive delicacy. But when we hear plum, we think plum, and so these days the term often also refers to a purple-y fruit flavor.

So what is the "sugarplum" in Dunkin's Sugarplum Macchiato exactly? According to the brand, the sugarplum portion of the drink is a mix of "bright berry flavors of blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, and plum, accented by notes of vanilla and rounded out with a sweet sugary finish for the ultimate winter delight." According to the Dunkin' blog, the idea for a sugarplum drink has been on the table since 2016, and while this past Valentine's Day's Pink Velvet Macchiato was the chain's first foray into colorful creations, the sugarplum concept was the item that inspired them to toy with tinted mix-ins.

Of course, despite dropping them from its name, Dunkin' still does donuts, and the purple "plum" drink is rolling out alongside a new, similarly-shaded snowflake donut. Both items will be available for a limited time this holiday season.