Review: Dunkin's Winter Holiday Menu Is A Sweet Mix Of Seasonal Flavors

With jack-o'-lanterns disappearing from front door stoops and trick-or-treating candy placed on clearance, the holiday season — complete with Mariah Carey, Christmas trees, twinkling lights, and filling family meals — is officially starting to defrost. One of my favorite parts of the winter holiday period is specialty coffee drink menus. Between Starbucks' 2025 festive flavors and Dunkin's array of sweet drinks, holiday menu lovers have a whole lot to enjoy this festive season.

Dunkin's holiday menu has quite a few new options for 2025 in addition to a couple of returning signature lattes. On the first day of Dunkin's holly-jolly offerings, I set out to try these signature lattes, sangria-inspired drinks, and cookie butter-laden coffees. I settled in at my closest Dunkin' location to enjoy a caffeine-fueled experience doused in holiday spirit. My goal was to determine if this menu is worth a visit to your favorite Dunkin' location or if it more closely matches my Takeout colleague's not-so-enthusiastic review of Dunkin's Candy Bar Signature Lattes.

Dunkin's holiday menu hit stores the very same day as the "Wicked" drinks and Munchkin tins: November 5. This dual release made for something of a chaotic scene at my local Dunkin', leaving employees bouncing all over the place in an effort to take and fill orders from both online customers and those crowding the actual store.

Like most holiday menus, you can reasonably expect that these drinks will stick around through November and December, but will likely start petering off around the time Christmas lights begin coming down in your neighborhood. While the entire new holiday menu was slated to be released at the same time, my location did not yet have the Ultimate Bacon Jam Breakfast Sandwich or the Bacon Jam Grilled Cheese available for order. Your experience may differ, but if you have your heart set on trying those items, you might want to double-check their availability before heading out to your local Dunkin'.

For the 2025 holiday season, Dunkin' offers the Peppermint Mocha and Toasted White Chocolate Latte, both of which are returning favorites. New additions include the Cookie Butter Cloud Latte, plus two new fruit-forward items — the raspberry croissant and the Berry Sangria Refresher — and the aforementioned Ultimate Bacon Jam Breakfast Sandwich and the Bacon Jam Grilled Cheese.

Dunkin's menu offers a refreshing but still cozy range of drinks. Starbucks, on the other hand, is more focused on the cozy side of things. This year's Starbucks lineup includes the Peppermint Mocha, Caramel Brûlée Latte, Iced Sugar Cookie Latte, and Iced Gingerbread Chai. After an undisclosed amount of time, the menu will also bring back the Chestnut Praline Latte and the iconic Eggnog Latte. Food items are mostly on the sweet, baked good side.

The biggest difference between the Dunkin' and Starbucks menus is just how many new items the Dunkin' list offers. Starbucks isn't really doing much innovation beyond what it's offered in the past, instead choosing to stick with long-time favorites. Clearly, it's leaning more into nostalgia — and, for this reason, feels slightly more grown-up. Dunkin', on the other hand, is going for more of a playful feel, which is abundantly clear in its cup decorations, too.

Many families (mine included) herald cookies as an integral part of the holiday season. This Cookie Butter Cloud Latte is an iced offering with espresso, brown sugar, and the flavor of warm cookies, fresh from the oven. Possibly the most important part of the drink is the cookie butter cold foam that even comes topped with cookie butter crumbles. Although the drink doesn't explicitly mention Biscoff cookie butter, based on the look of the drink, that was certainly my expectation moving in for my first sip.

But with the first few tastes, I certainly didn't taste much cookie butter. Instead, it was a toned-down espresso taste that offered a mild coffee bite and was not nearly as enjoyable as I had hoped. The cookie butter pieces on top of the cold foam were enjoyable to eat, but even those didn't give cookie butter. These were more cookie, less cookie butter. To drive the point home, the drink had cold foam, syrup, and crumble, all in the same-named cookie butter flavor, but the overall result honestly tasted more like slightly overdone cookies. While I didn't love how the cookie butter played here, I hoped the other two varieties of cookie butter beverage I ordered would fare better with the flavor.

In preparing for this Dunkin' holiday tasting, I was only aware that Dunkin' had the Cookie Butter Cloud Latte on the menu. However, when it came time to place my order, I found two other new cookie butter choices available.

Like its latte counterpart, the cold brew option had the three varieties of cookie butter flavoring. Thankfully, I found the Cookie Butter Cold Brew much, much tastier than the Cookie Butter Cloud Latte. This is absolutely the best way to enjoy the cookie butter flavor, and if you're longing to try this holiday option, I heartily encourage you to try this iteration of the drink instead.

The cold brew was a smoother counterpart to the cookie butter, so it didn't taste or feel overdone, unlike the latte. It specifically reminded me of the Cold Brew Black Caf from Kat Saka's Kettle in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge inside Disney's Hollywood Studios. Both drinks offer a crunchy topping that pairs nicely with the smoothness of the cold brew.

The last of the cookie butter drinks I tried from Dunkin' was the chai variety. Unlike the other two cookie butter drinks, the Cookie Butter Oat Iced Chai Latte only had the cookie butter syrup for flavoring. The drink also contained chai syrup, complemented nicely by the oat milk.

I loved the idea of the slight spiciness of chai combining with the cookie butter syrup, but this drink was a lot thicker and syrupier than I expected. In fact, the whole drink seemed to be syrup, and the oat milk did little to cut that thickness. The chai itself was also milder than I expected, which was surprising given the thickness. If it weren't for this texture concern, this drink would have been much better, but it was just too thick to get past. I wasn't looking for a chai shake; it needed to feel like a latte, which it didn't.

The other category of new drinks coming in holiday 2025 is the Berry Sangria Refresher. Like other Refresher menu items, you can have your Refresher made with lemonade, green tea, black tea, or sparkling water. The green tea seemed like the most fitting option, so that was my choice for this tasting.

If your family is anything like mine, then the fancy sangria, punch, and cocktails really start flowing during the holiday season. This berry-forward Refresher offered something of an homage to this delicious holiday tradition. Dunkin's first holiday Refresher contains strong berry flavors that were complemented nicely by the green tea. Though this certainly wasn't as tasty as the Teavana Shaken Berry Sangria Herbal Tea from Starbucks in 2016, it was an enjoyable berry sip that hints at sangria without completely delivering on the flavor.

Like the cookie butter drinks, the sangria opened up a world of other orders you might want to try. One of these spin-offs was the Blueberry Sangria Lemonade Refresher. This drink was a combination of the Berry Sangria Refresher and Blueberry Breeze Refresher. The blueberry breeze flavor was a holdover from the summer Dunkin' refreshers that I found over-sugared and under-flavored. The applications from the summer were just boring, but paired with the sangria, this flavor is put to much better use.

Originally, my Dunkin' barista made this drink incorrectly. It was only when I went to take a sip of the original drink that it became clear. I knew the flavors were off when I tasted no lemonade in the drink. Thankfully, this was easily remedied as I brought the drink to the attention of the barista, who remade it without question. This time, it offered a more enhanced berry flavor thanks to the pairing of blueberry and sangria. The lemonade added just enough tartness to enhance the sweetness of the berries.

If you're looking for a croissant decorated for the season, consider the new Raspberry Striped Croissant. This pastry is your typical croissant, but with colorful stripes over the top to match the raspberry jam filling on the inside.

I found this croissant to be tasty, but thought it lacked the texture of a classic croissant. Rather than the flaky dough that I hoped for, it reminded me more of a chewy croissant from Costco. While that croissant is one of my favorite Costco foods under $10, it was a little chewier than I expected. The raspberry jam inside was also too minimal for my liking, but its flavor certainly reminded me of the type of jam you might slather over peanut butter. I also wish those stripes on the outside were more red than they were brownish, nearly pretzel-colored, but I figured I should chalk that expectation up to marketing photos that made it look sumptuously raspberry-hued.

Two signature lattes have returned to Dunkin's holiday menu this year, including the Toasted White Chocolate Signature Latte. This comes in hot and cold variations, both of which use espresso and toasted white chocolate for flavoring. The real excitement of a signature latte comes from the toppings. Like a decadent ornament on the tree, each signature latte comes with its own dressings. In this case, the signature topper included a helping of whipped cream, caramel drizzle, and cinnamon sugar sprinkles.

I was very impressed by this latte and its actual toasted flavor. The drink reminded me of the marshmallow flavor you might get from a roasted treat over a summer campfire. While some may consider that more of a summer flavor, the tastiness of it all certainly hints at a warming fire lighting up your living room. This drink made its debut when the holidays arrived at Dunkin' in 2021, and it proved tasty enough to return several times since. After one sip, I fully understood why.

Plenty of coffee shops will offer iterations of a peppermint mocha during the holiday season. Dunkin's contribution to this seminal seasonal flavor is the Peppermint Mocha Signature Latte. Like other signature drinks, it used espresso and syrup sweeteners for the flavoring, but again, the most exciting part was quite possibly the topping.

Like my Toasted White Chocolate Signature Latte, the Peppermint Mocha Signature Latte boasted whipped cream, drizzle, and a sprinkle topping. In this case, it was a predictable mocha drizzle with a hot chocolate powder on top. While you'll find peppermint mochas everywhere, you'd be hard-pressed to find one with a hot chocolate topping, only further solidifying its place on a holiday menu.

Though this was a tasty peppermint mocha, I feel like it needed slightly more sweet peppermint to be fully enjoyable. Unfortunately, there is no way to personalize the drink to increase one flavor note over the other since the peppermint mocha at Dunkin' is a single sweetened flavor addition rather than two separate mocha and peppermint syrups.

Dunkin's holiday menu has some tasty seasonal offerings. The choices taste unique compared to what I've tried at Starbucks, and while there were drinks I didn't enjoy, I would say the Dunkin' holiday menu is, overall, a hit.

The cookie butter line offered an interesting spin on the classic Christmas cookie flavor. While the Cookie Butter Cloud Latte may have stemmed from common customer customizations, I still think the classic cold brew, which originally came out in 2022, is superior. Like the cookie butter flavor, the sangria Refreshers line presents a variety of possibilities to make unique drinks. While some are most certainly better than others, both examples I tried were surprisingly tasty.

For flavors, it's nice to see something new yet familiar. Perhaps my favorite thing about the way Dunkin' does the holidays in 2025 is the brand's lighthearted approach. Like years past, Dunkin's holiday cups totally sleigh, as the pink and orange illustrations bring a cartoonish whimsy to the season, pulling in that childlike wonder we long to feel this time of year.