Last week, we teamed up with the folks over at Vine Arts Wine & Spirits to bring coffee- and wine-lovers a tasting workshop designed to satisfy their senses and expand their understanding of flavour profiles. In fact, this was our very first time doing a collaborative event with Vine Arts! 🎉🍷
During the workshop, we provided a curated selection of premium coffees and wines, all of which were chosen to highlight the complex balance of flavours.
Beginning with an intro to coffee and an intro to wine, we shared about the farms that Rogue Wave sources coffee from, major wine regions and the families behind them, coffee varietals and processes, wine types, and grape varietals.
As we shared about the fascinating world of coffee and wine, we guided our attendees through tasting elements including sweetness, bitterness, body, clarity, and acidity. Our goal was to enhance folks' understanding of terminology to improve their coffee- and wine-drinking experiences.
We covered quite a lot of fascinating information during the tasting, including but not limited to:
- Varieties: Not only are there thousands of wine varieties under the species Vitis Vinifera, but there are also thousands of coffee varieties under Coffea Arabica.
- Process: Whereas "Process" in terms of wine typically encompasses growing, harvesting, crushing, pressing, fermentation, clarification, and aging/bottling, for coffee this refers to the isolated step of removing the coffee from the coffee cherry. In both scenarios, the process heavily influences the final taste.
- Age: Wine and coffee are both similar in that some wines taste better with age and some coffees taste better with rest. However, age is a fine balance as too much aging and rest for wine and coffee can reduce desirable characteristics.
While the response to this workshop was overwhelmingly positive, we underestimated how much time going through 6 coffees and 6 wines would take! We ran over time by a little bit, so for the next workshop, we'll be sure to work on our pacing. 😉
We had such a fantastic time meeting our attendees last week and we look forward to hosting more events like this in the future! Stay up-to-date on our upcoming events by checking our Events & Classes page or by subscribing to our Coffee Education mailing list.
