Tag Archive 'wine_analogy'

CoffeeCON 2013

Posted by TheShot on 10 May 2013 | Filed under: Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Home Brew, Machine, Quality Issues, Roasting

Perhaps the biggest irony is that nobody should ever need a CoffeeCON. As we posted last year, on the same day as the inaugural CoffeeCON 2012, we were instead attending the Grand Tasting of La Paulée de San Francisco: a $300-per-person consumer Burgundy appreciation event backed by a tremendous amount of wine industry support and [...]

Trip Report: Goody Goodie cream & sugar Dessert Salon & Cafe

Posted by TheShot on 18 Mar 2012 | Filed under: Café Society, Local Brew, Roasting

This bakery/café first opened in 2010 as a joint venture of the Goody Goodie bakery and John Quintos, who’s behind Cento, Special Xtra, and Vega. It was originally named “StarStream,” and the coffee routinely followed the Quintos rubber-stamp formula of small La Marzocco Linea espresso machines and Blue Bottle Coffee. However, as the location developed [...]

A Tale of Two Beverages

Posted by TheShot on 26 Feb 2012 | Filed under: Beans, Consumer Trends, Home Brew, Machine, Quality Issues

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Saturday, February 25, 2012 offered a curious contrast between the very different worlds of consumer appreciation for wine and coffee. For the former, I attended La Paulée de San Francisco 2012 — arguably the most over-the-top consumer wine event in America. For the [...]

A Standardized System of Coffee Critic Terminology?

Posted by TheShot on 09 Sep 2011 | Filed under: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues

For this installment of comic relief Friday, we bring you the coffee critic wheel. You’re probably well aware of the coffee flavor wheel, which borrowed heavily from the wine aroma wheel in the wine tasting world. However, you might not be aware of wine vintner Janet Trefethen’s (of Trefethen Family Vineyards) Standardized System of Wine [...]

Coffee lessons from the wine world

Posted by TheShot on 05 Aug 2011 | Filed under: Café Society, Consumer Trends

Yesterday we came across a post where a Boston Globe writer implored winemakers to be more like their coffee counterparts: A lesson in winemaking – straight from the espresso bar . . . – By the glass – Wine News, Views & Reviews – Boston.com. It wouldn’t be the first time coffee’s wine analogy ran [...]

America’s Golden Age of Coffee: Remarkably Like Italy’s Past

Posted by TheShot on 03 Aug 2011 | Filed under: Barista, Café Society, Quality Issues

Several months after we declared that coffee’s golden age is over, famed Illy barista-in-chief, Giorgio Milos, posted this in The Atlantic today: America’s Golden Age of Coffee: Remarkably Like Italy’s Past – Giorgio Milos – Life – The Atlantic. You might recall Mr. Milos ruffling a few New World coffee feathers last year in The [...]

America will never make good restaurant coffee

Posted by TheShot on 03 Apr 2011 | Filed under: Barista, Café Society, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee

We’ve been lamenting the sorry state of restaurant coffee in these pages since 2005. But let it be known that, as of this moment forward, we have officially given up on the possibility of ever being reliably served good coffee in American restaurants. Sure, there have been a few successes and battles won along the [...]

SF Coffee’s “Battle of the Bands”

Posted by TheShot on 29 Mar 2011 | Filed under: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Local Brew

Growing up as a teenager, I always hated those “Battle of the Bands” contests. Because — despite my odd musical tastes, from the Dream Syndicate to Mötorhead, at a time when most teens wanted the inoffensive sounds of Huey Lewis & the News — I quickly learned that these contests were never about talent. They [...]

Why is the coffee industry so indifferent to its customers?

Posted by TheShot on 03 Feb 2011 | Filed under: Add Milk, Barista, Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Machine

Many in the coffee industry speak volumes about wanting to market themselves to the public as the “new wine.” But if we examine the practices the industry has taken on to accomplish any of this, it has failed miserably on nearly all fronts. What becomes all too clear is that the coffee industry either doesn’t [...]

An unlikely pair: Cheese paired with coffee is a buzz for your taste buds

Posted by TheShot on 27 Jan 2011 | Filed under: Consumer Trends

As Americans have ravaged through anything edible from the surface of the planet like a biblical plague of locusts, you can’t argue that we have become rather fat and bored. So as consumers, we have resorted to behaviors suggestive of infants who sit in their own mess sticking various things in their mouths until something [...]

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