Coffee is just like wine, except different
Posted by TheShot on 27 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Restaurant Coffee
Coffee’s ever-popular wine analogy works well in the economics case. There are some people who appreciate what goes into a $100 bottle of wine, and there are others who prefer beer and don’t see how that bottle adds up to the price of a few good cases of their favorite brew.
On a social level, however, the wine analogy starts to fall apart. A newly food-aware-and-obsessed American public wants to follow the comfortable path of wine appreciation to understand and appreciate coffee. While it works in some areas, it fails in others — for example, the newly popularized concepts of coffee cupping and coffee pairing.
Take coffee cupping. While there are a number of parallels to wine tasting, cupping carries some elements that are closer to slaughtering your own cow than they are to wine tasting. Picking the lobster out of the tank was one thing, but I’m not ready to be handed the hacksaw when I order my steak and fries.
More recently, I’ve also noted a trend towards coffee pairings. Some of it has come from Starbucks’ consumer education ads, while more experimental forms have included restaurant dinners featuring single origin coffees paired with each course of a meal. One example is the seven course pairing recently developed as a Coffee Dinner jointly between Navarre Restaurant and Stumptown Coffee Roasters of Portland, OR. Beyond the experimental novelty value, it forces the wine comparison too literally — with a mallot. Coffee pairing integrated into a meal plan makes about as much sense as pairing cigars with each course. And unless you’re Fidel Castro, that might not be too appealing…
Wine appreciation clearly provides a convenient, established, and familiar framework for consumers to educate themselves on and enjoy quality coffees. With a little time, I expect some of these more ridiculous literal translations to die out as the clumsy fads that they are. The good news is that there may be unique coffee appreciation experiences, wholly separate from wine appreciation, that are on the way as the market for excellent coffee evolves.
6 Comments »
on 11 Jan 2007 at 7:38 am PT 1.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Espresso done right is intense — a full-bodied, stop-time moment to savor said …
[...] But, as Corby Kummer, author of The Joy of Coffee, is quoted in the article, “I hate it when people use a wine analogy for coffee.” Lately, I have caught myself using a balsamic vinegar of Modena analogy. Acidic vinegar doesn’t sound like the kind of appetizing thing you might, say, pour over ice cream. But if you’ve ever had aged balsamic vinegar of Modena, you know just how sweet and syrupy — and so unlike its wine-based American counterpart — it can be. The same is true when comparing a true espresso with the typical American version. [...]
on 11 Jan 2007 at 5:42 pm PT 2.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Mysterious ‘Meth Coffee’ launches in San Francisco said …
[...] Now it’s no secret that I’ve been ranting a lot lately about how caffeine addiction has been made synonymous with a love of coffee — in ways where we wouldn’t presume that a wine aficionado is naturally an alcoholic. (The hideous wine analogy rears its ugly head yet again!) But come on… “Meth Coffee”?! I just read today that bath soap qualifies as an instrument of caffeine delivery: A New Type of Java Jolt: Caffeinated Soap. Is the Dove Unscented Meth Beauty Bar up next for a little Fight Club-like marketing? [...]
on 25 Jan 2007 at 9:54 am PT 3.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » A New Year’s Coffee Resolution?: A Moratorium On Snake Oil Articles About Coffee said …
[...] Of course, we’ve seen many prior forms of the unnecessarily polarizing “coffee: medicine or poison?” article. What made this one different is that it was featured prominently in the most notable consumer magazine for wine drinkers. Isn’t that a bit like Cigar Aficionado magazine citing the latest medical research on the dangers of eating red meat? For all the people who insist on making wine analogies for coffee, we seem to be holding coffee to a different health standard than we have for wine. [...]
on 21 Feb 2007 at 5:45 pm PT 4.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Coffee fans toast what they roast said …
[...] Too often, restaurants, cafés, stores, and, well, coffee drinkers treat roasted coffee as if it were imported wine rather than fresh baked bread. (Another reason why I don’t like coffee’s wine analogy.) Nobody would think twice about buying wine shipped in from Italy, sitting on a shipping pallet for a month while it crossed multiple oceans. But their bread? Be serious. (Illy or Lavazza, anyone?) [...]
on 04 Apr 2007 at 3:17 pm PT 5.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Wine taster Angela Mount and Percol coffee join forces said …
[...] As much as I don’t like the overly simplistic wine analogy for coffee, the wine snobs are starting to pay their respects to coffee — and the over 1,300 aromatic and flavor compounds it offers more than wine. The latest example comes from the UK: New Consumer | News | Wine taster Angela Mount and Percol coffee join forces. [...]
on 05 Jun 2007 at 8:30 pm PT 6.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Vintage Trend: When wine is nothing like Starbucks said …
[...] weekend’s New York Times Magazine featured an article that sort of did a reverse take on the ever-popular wine analogy for coffee: Vintage Trend - Retail Wines Chains - Wines - Alcoholic Beverages - Alcohol - Consumed [...]