Table Wine, Varietal Wine, and Coffee

I have really strong memories of my uncle bringing back sample from all the red wine vats at the winery and spending time with my aunt determining the assemblage for the table red wine he sold by the liter to locals.  I think he even used a graduated cylinder to quickly do things like "60% merlot, 20% nielluccio, 20% syrah".   The wine he makes this way is always my favorite. To this day, I prefer a good red blend to a straight varietal.

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Flash forward to this afternoon when Irene and I had a coffee dégustation.  Yesterday I hand roasted the same green coffee beans two ways:  One well past the first crack but before the second crack and the other pan I took past the second crack but no further.

note the repurposed bonne maman jars

Now they look pretty similar but they do smell slightly different before brewing and when we tasted them (Irene blind tasting them), we agreed:  The longer roast was richer, a little burnt, and nuttier.  The lighter roast had a more nuanced aroma (like a coffee shop) but disappeared in your mouth.  In short, the lighter roast smelled better, but the darker roast tasted better.  I asked "Should we do a 50/50 blend for a coffee?" Irene responded "60/40 for the dark."

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Wine and coffee snobs are always tooting the value of terroir and the single varietal experience, but let's not loose sight of a good assemblage that fills out all you are looking for from top to bottom in a beverage!