The Starbucks Via Taste Test -- Is it really better than your mother's instant coffee?

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was putting on the hard sell in New York on Tuesday morning to a room full of investors and journalists as he unveiled a taste test of the company's new instant coffee, Via. Ever since the news broke that Starbucks was entering the instant coffee market as its next big hope to save the struggling company, the response has been cynical -- and that's a generous term. So today was about Starbucks turning the tables and getting its products out there in front of influence-makers. They seemed pretty confident it would pass muster.

So does it?