Sour Grapes the Irish wine blog. Wine in Ireland.

 

It’s been called the Coffee Pinotage Revolution, it’s also been called a farce and criticised for being fake, phony and contrived, but coffee flavoured wine looks very much as though it’s here to stay.

The origins of coffee wine go all the way back to 2001, when Bertus Fourie discovered how to make the natural coffee-like flavour in wine come to the fore. According to Wine Goggle, Fourie was experimenting with yeasts and wood when noticed the coffee aroma emanating from the batches of wine he was making.

He bottled it, presented it to Diemersfontein and history was made.

The rise of coffee pinotage has not been smooth; much like the path Fourie has taken since his discovery. After putting Diemersfontein on the coffee pinotage map, Fourie movied to KWV, where he produced Café Culture and then he moved again, this time to Val de Vie.

It can be argued that he is fickle, simply going where the money takes him, but his fans insist that he likes a challenge and
building up the reputation of a good wine is certainly a challenge.

There has also been some controversy as to whether Fourie’s discovery is really all that ground breaking. In an article on wine.co.za, Nikki Lordan writes that Australian winemakers have been familiar with wine’s coffee-like characteristics since the 1970s. The reason they haven’t been credited with creating a new wine revolution is because they chose not to focus on the coffee properties. One winemaker cited in the article said that they “have always been recognized and described as barrel ferment artefact and have been utilised to varying degrees by different winemakers as a complexing agent”.

It’s also been said that all red wines contain the coffee-like characteristics, although to varying degrees, which sounds a little like an excuse, or sour grapes, if you will.

Despite all this, and the fact that critics have not taken kindly to the new coffee-wine trend, coffee pinotage is incredibly popular with the wine drinking public, particularly in South Africa, the US, Canada and the UK.

About the author

Jade Scully is a copywriter, blogger and online marketing enthusiast who has published her work on a series of online publications and websites including Africadventure, Entertain SA, Technifrique, The Greenery, Youdidit, Firstpage as well as Leeulekker who provide a range of wining and dining resources for Southern Africa travelers.