Wine and Coffee by Bryan Cass

The more I think about it the more I realize that wine and coffee have a lot in common. Flavors of wine and coffee are described in similar ways - fruity, dark, smooth etc. They have both also been around for thousands and thousands of years. Humans first inventions may have just gone fire, wheel, bow and arrow, wine, coffee. Well, maybe not, but it was probably pretty close to something like that! The major type of coffee consumed is Arabica making up something like 90% of the world's coffee production, the minor type is Robusta, making up around 10%. With wine, the European grapevine Vitis Vinifera makes up about the same percentage of wine production and the American grapevine Vitis Labrusca, makes up a tiny percentage just like Robusta coffee. Coffee plants can live up to around 60 years, grapevines have an extremely long fruit bearing life as well. Premium coffee is handpicked as are many premium wines. They both also need to be harvested within a small window of time to achieve optimum ripeness levels. The roasting process can be compared to the fermentation process as both are very time and temperature dependent and can be manipulated by the roaster or winemaker to modify the flavor of the final product. Blending is also very important in winemaking and in coffee. Some of the world's best coffees are sourced from different regions and blended until the ideal flavor is found, as is with some of the world's best wines. The people who enjoy both these beverages are usually the people that consume them the most and are also both prone to be described as coffee snobs or wine snobs by the general public. Sure, people really into beer get labeled this sometimes as well but not nearly as often as coffee or wine people. I can see a similar tone when people like to say "I don't drink Merlot" or "I only drink my coffee black". There are also enough different coffees and wines in the world that you could probably drink a different one every day for the rest of your life if you really wanted to. Not to mention the fact that one brand of coffee may taste different year in, year out, depending on the weather conditions in which the coffee was grown in, same goes for vines. I recently read an article stating that Starbucks is going to start selling wine at a few select stores starting soon, it seems they are catching on as well. I just need to make sure I don't start swirling my coffee or blowing on my wine.