It is.
And that's one reason coffee and wine get compared so often.
Both can be described with words that sound more at home in a fruit bowl or a dessert case than in a beverage. Blueberry. Chocolate. Citrus. Caramel. Floral. Spice.
Both also have something else in common: where they come from matters.
But the more you look at coffee and wine, the more interesting the comparison becomes. Because while they have plenty in common, coffee isn't simply wine's caffeinated cousin.
And it doesn't need to be.
They Both Start in a Place
Wine grapes and coffee cherries are agricultural products. That sounds obvious, but it's important.
Neither one starts out tasting like the beverage we eventually drink.
A coffee tree grows cherries. A grapevine grows grapes. What happens next—and what happened before harvest—has an enormous influence on what ends up in the glass or cup.
Climate, soil, rainfall, elevation, temperature, sunlight, and even the particular variety being grown all contribute to the final product.
This is one of the reasons a coffee from Ethiopia can taste remarkably different from one grown in Colombia, just as a wine from Burgundy can taste very different from one produced in California.
We often use the word terroir when talking about wine: the idea that a particular place leaves its mark on what is grown there.
Coffee has its own version of this.
And that's where the comparison starts to make a lot of sense.
But There's More Than Place
If you've ever compared two coffees side by side, you already know that origin isn't the whole story.
What happens after harvest matters, too.
Coffee can be washed, naturally processed, or honey processed. Each method changes how the coffee develops and what characteristics eventually make their way into the cup.
Roasting matters. A lighter roast can preserve and emphasize some of the brighter, fruitier and floral characteristics of a coffee, while a darker roast can bring more roast-driven flavors like chocolate, caramel, and spice to the forefront.
Then there's brewing.
And this is where the coffee-and-wine comparison starts to fall apart.
Wine Is Ready. Coffee Isn't.
When you open a bottle of wine, you're pretty close to the finished product.
With coffee, you're not.
The coffee still needs to be ground. Water needs to be added. Temperature, grind size, brew time, and technique all affect what you taste.
You can take the exact same coffee and brew it as a French press, a pour over, or an espresso and get noticeably different experiences.
That's one of the things we love about coffee.
The person brewing it is part of the process.
That doesn't mean you need a $2,000 espresso machine or a laboratory full of equipment to make good coffee. It simply means coffee gives us a little more opportunity to participate in what ends up in the cup.
And sometimes that's part of the fun.
So What About Those Tasting Notes?
This is probably the most obvious connection between coffee and wine.
Wine can have notes of cherry, blackberry, vanilla, tobacco, or spice.
Coffee can have notes of blueberry, citrus, chocolate, jasmine, caramel, or stone fruit.
Neither list is an ingredient list.
They're descriptions of what people perceive when they taste and smell the beverage.
We have a whole other article about what coffee tasting notes actually mean, because this question comes up often. But for our purposes here, the important thing is that both coffee and wine have developed a shared language for talking about flavor.
And that language gives people a way to compare what they're experiencing.
It also gives us permission to pay attention.
You don't have to identify bergamot in your coffee—or know what bergamot tastes like—to enjoy it. You can simply notice that one coffee tastes brighter and fruitier while another tastes richer and more chocolatey.
That's tasting, too.
Does That Mean Coffee Is as Complex as Wine?
This is where things get a little tricky.
People love to debate whether coffee or wine has more flavors, more complexity, more nuance, or a wider range of sensory experiences.
We're not sure that coffee needs to win that argument.
They're different beverages made from different plants, processed in different ways, and consumed in very different ways.
What they have in common is that both can reward curiosity.
You can drink either one without knowing anything about where it came from. Or you can start asking questions.
Where was it grown?
What variety is it?
How was it processed?
How was it made?
What am I noticing?
You don't need a vocabulary test to enjoy the answer.
There's Another Difference We Don't Talk About as Much
There's an important difference between coffee and wine that has less to do with flavor and more to do with the people who produce them.
Wine and coffee can both come from small family operations, large companies, and everything in between. But the way the industries are structured is quite different.
A winery may grow grapes, make wine, bottle it, and sell it under one name. In coffee, the farmer who grows the coffee cherry is often several steps removed from the person who roasts and sells the finished coffee.
That distance can make it harder for coffee growers to capture the value of improvements they make on the farm.
Producing better coffee can require better picking, processing, drying, equipment, labor, and infrastructure. All of those things cost money. And the person making those investments doesn't necessarily receive the full benefit when the coffee eventually reaches the consumer.
That's one reason relationships throughout the coffee supply chain matter.
Paying more for a coffee isn't automatically proof that a farmer was paid fairly. But understanding where the coffee came from, how it was produced, and how value moves through the supply chain can help us make better choices about the coffee we buy.
It's also one of the reasons we think quality and price should be understandable.
Wine Gets to Age. Coffee Wants to Be Fresh.
Here's another place where coffee and wine take very different paths.
Wine is often made with aging in mind. Time can be an important part of its development, whether that means months in a barrel or years in a bottle.
Coffee generally has the opposite relationship with time.
Once coffee is roasted, it is at its best when it's reasonably fresh. It needs a little time to settle after roasting, but it doesn't benefit from sitting around for years.
In fact, the qualities that make freshly roasted coffee so enjoyable—its aroma, sweetness, acidity, and complexity—gradually diminish with time.
So while you might proudly open a twenty-year-old bottle of wine, we'd rather hand you a bag of coffee that was roasted recently.
That's another reason the comparison can only go so far.
And Then There's the Part We Share
We sell coffee.
We also sell wine and beer at our Lake Bluff location.
So we're certainly not interested in declaring a winner.
A glass of wine can be part of a great dinner. A beer can be part of an afternoon with friends. And a cup of coffee can start a morning, end a meal, or give two people a reason to sit down and talk for a little while.
The beverages are different.
But the role they play in our lives can be surprisingly similar.
They give us something to gather around.
They give us something to talk about.
And they give us a reason to slow down long enough to notice what we're drinking.
Maybe Coffee Doesn't Need to Be Like Wine
The comparison between coffee and wine makes sense.
Both begin with agriculture. Both reflect their growing environment. Both are shaped by processing. Both have developed a language for describing flavor. And both can become endlessly interesting if you want to explore them.
But coffee doesn't need to become the wine of the morning.
It doesn't need the same rituals, the same vocabulary, or the same expectations.
Coffee has its own story.
It's grown thousands of miles away, processed by people who have developed generations of knowledge, roasted by someone who makes decisions about how to bring out its character, and finally brewed by you.
That's a pretty interesting journey for something that started as a little cherry on a tree.
And if somewhere along the way you taste blueberry, chocolate, or citrus?
Well, that's just another reason to be curious.
Great coffee changes the conversation.
