Comparing wine and coffee is very general. But if we focus on specific topics, we will make progress. In this blog, we discuss two products that always cause discussion: natural wine and specialty coffee. Can the two fields learn from each other?
Coffee and wine are cultural beverages that need to be explained and contextualized. Special forms of both beverage categories require a little more effort to fully understand them, such as specialty coffees and natural wines.
In the September issue of the gourmet magazine Falstaff, the cover (see photo above) reads: "Natural Wine – Quality or Torment?" Right next to it, the other headline: "Coffee. The latest trends." Coffee and wine together on the cover of a glossy magazine. Either coffee has arrived where it belongs, or natural wine has managed to become respectable. Or both.
What is specialty coffee?
According to the official SCA definition, these are coffees that are free of primary defects and score at least 80 points in cupping. These points are achieved by evaluating and quantifying the coffee's sensory attributes. We have elaborated on this definition further.
What is natural wine?
An answer I like comes from Martin Helfer in an interview with vi-tis:
"I don't like to use 'natural wine' too much. Wine is a product cultivated by human hands. Grapes don't ferment on their own and become wine."
Martin Helfer in vi-tis, November 2018
Helfer prefers the term "natural wines, which were produced with as little intervention as possible, i.e., biodynamic farming in the vineyard, and the wine is only accompanied in the cellar. (...) No 'unnecessary' interventions during fermentation, no deacidification, no filtering or fining. Also no sulfur."
It is clear: Natural (—natural) wines thrive on reduction to the essentials. They are defined by exclusion criteria that are standard for "conventional wines."
With specialty coffee, it's less about exclusion and much more about a taste definition. The way coffees are made has no influence on whether a coffee qualifies as a specialty coffee or not. On the one hand, the term is not protected, and on the other hand, there are no agronomic guidelines that would legitimize a certain practice as a specialty.
Specialty coffee = it's about taste
Natural wines = it's about the making and the taste
Mature specialty coffee market and pubescent natural wine market?
Specialty coffee is a niche and must remain so, otherwise it would no longer be special. However, a niche can grow. The colorful, trendy, and controversial contributions and concepts these days come from the specialty coffee world, and the larger coffee world observes and copies what makes sense to them. This avant-garde vs. mass market relationship is a normal course of events.
Nevertheless, representatives of the specialty coffee world have managed to make the product respectable and mature with it. Hardly anyone has not heard of the "filter coffee trend" or tasted "single farm lots."
To put it somewhat dramatically: Specialty coffee has arrived in the middle of society – but not everyone likes it, and that's okay.
Natural wine, on the other hand, carries this absurd constellation within itself: the production method is very old, but the market is still very young. My grandparents made wine even before a time when yeast was added to start fermentation. In fact, they made something like natural wines – they just didn't call it that.
Helfer is asked if the consumer knows what natural wine is? – "More and more." However, there is no declaration requirement for wine, the consumer does not know what a conventional wine may contain and how much sulfur, it only says sulfite." Helfer continues and explains:
"Hardly any winemaker says that he produces natural wine. He simply produces wine according to his philosophy, always with the highest possible quality and what nature offers him, depending on the year." He also believes that it is currently a "hype," but one that will last.
Martin Helfer, vi-tis, November 2018
So far, we only see natural wines occasionally in gastronomy – where a specific concept is pursued, or where one is a bit bolder. Up to now, I haven't seen natural wines in any random pub. For them, it is still too special. Perhaps it doesn't even need to be and it's the same as with specialty coffee. A bit of niche sometimes helps to stay attractive.
Is taste a matter of age?
If we were to calculate the average age of our participants in the Kaffeemacher courses, we would clearly end up with a number under 50. There may be many reasons for this, but let's stick to the openness to new tastes.
Rethinking coffee, opening up to new tastes, requires some courage. You also have to allow it, as coffee is an emotional product. For many, coffee is a 5-minute meditation, a moment that belongs to oneself. You might not want someone to tell you how coffee should or could taste.
With wine, it's often no different – "I don't like French wines" I recently overheard in a restaurant. Rigid ideas, of course, don't help to get to know wine anew. The audience for natural wine is also likely to be in the under-50 category.
Martin Helfer says: "If you've been drinking your Bordeaux for 30 years, your palate is conditioned to exactly that taste." Or, as a friend of mine puts it: you don't have to teach an old dog new tricks.
Mutual learning
Specialty coffee is no longer the newest, but a rather young phenomenon that is developing rapidly. The Sturm & Drang phase is over, and it is becoming more mainstream. Sometimes I think that natural wines are at a similar point. They still have to prove themselves, one has to explain and compare.
However, natural wine has a decisive advantage that we coffee people also soon hope for; access to fine dining. Chefs and sommeliers as advocates help establish natural wine. In combination with food, wines – and the food – sometimes appear completely new. With espresso after dinner, however, less risk is often taken. You usually get what you expect, and that is actually a real shame. More on this in a future post.
A great concept that combines natural wines and specialty coffee is, for example, 169 West in Zurich: https://www.gaultmillau.ch/zuri-isst/169-west-pure-trinkfreude
