Coffee Beans and Wine Grapes: Related Passions of the Palate

Aside from the obvious differences, coffee and wine have a lot in common. For one thing, you can’t always have as much as you would like without a side effect. Too much coffee might make you a bit twitchy. But you can drink as much as you like of the strongest coffee in the world and still pass a field sobriety test.

Wine is made from the flesh of the grape; its bitter seeds are not part of the product but discarded or sold for other uses, such as vegetable oil. Conversely, only the seeds of the coffee tree – they aren’t really “beans” – are used in the beverage, the flesh of the coffee “cherry” is removed. And of course, heat is an enemy of wine, but coffee isn’t coffee until it’s heated past 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  While wine gets better with age, coffee doesn’t.

Similarities between bean and grape:

Complexity – Wine and coffee have hundreds of chemical components that influence flavor. Striking the proper balance between everything is the essence of the art.

Mystique – Much of the art and science of growing, processing, and roasting coffee is unknown even to avid coffee lovers, some of whom now actually tour coffee growing regions such as the Kona Coast, just as wine lovers tour the wine regions of France, Italy, or California’s Central Coast.

Terroir – Coffee and wine are products of their environment. With a sip, coffee and wine experts can discern the characteristic flavor notes of a specific growing region.

Passion – Growers and processors of coffee can be commercial operators aiming for volume or passionate craftsmen whose product is a labor of love.

Coffee Myths

“Columbian Coffee” – Many companies advertise “100 Percent Columbian Coffee.” It’s just branding. The claim is meaningless and does not imply quality. Columbia is a very big country and some of its coffee is very good while some of it is not.

“Fresh Roasted” – The term usually means “vacuum packed soon after we roasted it” – which could be a year ago, or more. Unless there is a roasting machine at work on the premises, there is no guarantee that the coffee will actually be fresh.

“It’s Great because it’s Arabica” – Coffee made from beans of the Arabica species start out better than coffee made from beans of the Robusta species, but the distinction means nothing if the Arabica beans aren’t very good. Less than five percent of the Arabica grown in the world qualifies as specialty, quality coffee. Ironically, poorer quality Robusta beans are often added to espresso to help produce the thick, orange crema that coffee lovers crave, but purists frown on this habit. According to Martin Dietrich, “Arabicas are not the good guys and Robusta are not the bad guys. They actually overlap.”

“French Roast” – Good espresso does not require burned, oily, over-roasted coffee beans. The concept of “French roast” coffee came from an old French habit of over-roasting poor quality beans in order to nuke out the bad taste. Martin Diedrich, for example, won’t sell coffee with oil burned onto them. “You’re no longer tasting the coffee, you’re tasting the roast. Most of the people who burn coffee aren’t giving you the best beans because you can’t taste the difference.”

Great Coffee is Expensive – Not really. Yes freshly roasted coffee from a quality roaster like Martin Diedrich’s Kéan Coffee is more expensive than Maxwell House, about the same as Starbuck’s, averaging about $14 a pound.

Coffee Equipment is Expensive – If you let your roaster grind your beans, all you need is a glass “French press” brewer with a plunger, the kind preferred by coffee hobbyists and the finer restaurants, will cost about $30. If you want to grind them yourself, get a burr grinder for $50 to 100. Home roasters start under $100. Espresso equipment is the exception: to obtain the true espresso taste, you will need a machine with a built-in high-pressure pump. Those start at $100 and top out in the thousands.

by Stan Brin