I love the taste of ground coffee, but unfortunately, I don't own a coffee machine, as I really don't have room for one in my kitchen. I try and make do with the better quality instant brands (I like the Kenco Columbian variety) and grabbing a "proper" coffee from a coffee shop when I am out and about. For this reason, I was intrigued somewhat, when I saw an advert on TV for a new product from Kenco called Millicano, which claims to create an authentic ground coffee flavour in an instant coffee form. As Kenco is my favourite coffee brand, I decided to look out for the product in shops to see if it lived up to the hype.

We were shopping in Tesco and I saw the tins on Millicano on the shelf, alongside the other instant coffee brands. It did seem a bit pricey, at £3.99, when most of the similar sized containers of instant coffee were a pound or so cheaper, but I reasoned that the high price must reflect the high quality of the product, which made me even more keen to try it. My husband was hugely sceptical, and threw a cheaper jar of Tesco own brand Gold coffee in the trolley as well and said that I should do a taste test to see whether the Millicano was really that much better . I was in no doubt that it would win hands down.

When we got to the till, the cashier got really excited and started raving about how good the Milicano coffee was. She said that once we had tasted it we would never go back to normal coffee and that her husband was addicted to the stuff. Now I was really keen to taste it!

The coffee is in a shiny metallic cardboard tube which is designed to look like metal tin. It looks very premium. The packaging also has a silver, lift-off lid and an inner lid, which seals in the freshness, which you tear off. The front of the tin has the logo and brand name and a picture of some coffee beans, with the tagline, "Wholebean Instant". I could see from the ingredient list that the coffee comprised mainly of roast instant granules, with 15% ground coffee added to create that rich, ground coffee flavour. A single, 100g tin claims to make 55 cups of coffee.

When I peeled back the freshness seal inside the tin, I expected a delicious coffee smell to waft up from the tin. I was a little disappointed that the scent, although lovely, was not as strong as I would have hoped, as I love the smell of ground coffee. Out of interest, I also had a sniff at the Tesco jar, and to my annoyance, that jar had a much stronger aroma. Please don't say my husband was right!

Anyway, it's all about the taste and I had high hopes for this coffee. I boiled up the kettle and added the recommended teaspoon of coffee to the cup. The grains were nice and fine and looked really premium quality. They dissolved quickly when the water was added. I was really impressed at the brown layer of crema which appeared on top of the coffee. You don't get that with instant coffee! I added the milk and took a sip. Hmmmm. Not quite what I hoped for. I took another sip. Nope, it definitely tasted like instant coffee to me. I took a cup to my husband for him to taste. He liked it, but agreed that it tasted no different to regular instant, and was certainly not as nice as the Kenco Columbian and Brazialian varieties which has a much richer flavour. I wondered whether adding more coffee would help, so I added another teaspoon to my cup. This did intensify the flavour somewhat, but it still just tasted like a strong instant coffee, not at all as full bodied as a proper cup of ground coffee.

Don't get me wrong, this is a lovely tasting drink, it just can't really be compared to drinking the ground variety and I don't think that it should make such grand claims.

The next day I had a cup of the cheaper Tesco stuff. Hubby was right. It was actually better in my opinion, but don't tell him that!

In conclusion, Kenco Millicano is a lovely tasting cup of coffee but is hugely overpriced and does not live up to its claims. Don't pay full price for this. Wait until it is on special offer, as it is still worth trying.