We coffee people often use the phrase "It's like wine!" when we want to explain something about coffee. But does the comparison between the two beverages hold up? Are there really so many similarities?
In September 2018, I bought the book pictured above, Buch by Morten Scholer, "Coffee and Wine". The author compares the two beverages as precisely as anyone has done before. Using hundreds of examples, he shows that the two products are only superficially very similar; but when we dig deeper, we find far more differences than similarities.
This might hurt those of us coffee people a bit. But does it hurt wine people too? I don't think so (yet). The urge to often compare coffee with wine probably comes largely from the coffee side.
Recently, I conducted a coffee tasting for laypeople, which is always highly interesting. I tried to mix extreme coffees with familiar ones. We had coffees from Brazil, Kenya, Äthiopien and Central America, with different processing methods, different ages, and different roast levels. To show how different the coffees are, I said: "If we were drinking wine here, these would probably be a Riesling, grape juice, an Amarone, a Chardonnay, and a Pinot Noir." People smiled – the reference to wine jargon was understood.
Would wine people now say: "This wine tasting is like coffee? We're comparing..." – probably not.
There are simple reasons: most connoisseurs have probably already attended a wine tasting, but few have attended a coffee tasting. With wine, many people feel more confident than with coffee. And when a coffee tasting is conducted, it's rarely done in a way that's on par with a wine tasting: as a cupping (because it's the most honest way to analyze coffee), structured and objective.
When I see espresso tastings being used as a comparison, we're dealing with some insurmountable challenges: espresso must first be properly extracted. And then you have to be willing and able to drink and analyze multiple espressos in succession – and who does that with enjoyment? Beforehand, it coats your tongue like a young Barolo, and every next drink tastes only half as good.
Adventurous with Wine, Conservative with Coffee
At the same time, and this is my personal feeling, people are somewhat more adventurous with wine than with coffee. Coffee is the intimate ritual, those five personal minutes in the morning that you can't take away from someone, let alone dispute with them. Every coffee drinker knows exactly what they want and need. No discussion.
The situation is quite different in the evening, in a restaurant, as a reward for a day's work – there you like to rely on the sommelier's knowledge, or pleasantly study the wine list. I often catch myself choosing quite quickly from the menu, then spending the last two-thirds of the time before ordering immersed in the wine list. Because it's simply fun and educational.
Coffee Menus and Wine Lists
And the coffee menu? It might say something like "our coffee specialties", but this should never be confused with "our Spezialitätenkaffee» These are two different things, though they both sound good. Unfortunately, there are far too few extensive coffee menus. It's also technically difficult to implement if you stand for freshness – to keep 20 wines fresh, I simply don't open them yet. A few more days of aging won't hurt them. But aging coffee a few more days can damage it.
Coffee and wine are different. As coffee people, we can use wine to compare sensations, sensory impressions, and interpretations. Wine vocabulary also serves us well in coffee, and we can integrate it nicely into coffee language.
But once we get into cultivation, the similarities end. An example? Vines that grow on dry, barren, and steep soil have a chance at very good wines. Coffee plants that grow on dry, barren, and steep soils die off.
Where Is the Journey Heading?
The more cafés in the future embrace a bolder coffee menu – featuring more specialty coffee and less coffee specialty drinks – the greater the potential.
The potential for exchange between two products that seem so similar at first glance, yet are so different. Sensory perception is the first point of contact; everything after that requires deeper explanations. And then we're in a conversation. So – share knowledge, create bold beverage menus, and get started.
A great podcast on this topic comes from Lucia Solis - "a former winemaker turned coffee specialist." Highly recommended!
