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Embracing the coffee revolution
12 March 2012  by Lucy Warner
Who's witnessed the coffee revolution? Love it or hate it, it's a South African creation and the consumers can't get enough of it.
You’d be hard pressed to miss the coffee revolution. Coffee shops, café’s, businesses such as Vida e café, Origin, Lavazza, Wild Bean Café, Crave, Café Nero, Costa Coffee, Nespresso and of course Starbucks, are all now serving the ‘real thing’.

The coffee revolution is spreading to other product categories too. Love it or hate it, it is thriving, particularly in the local market. Looking at the shelves recently it is evident this is a genuine market category and in my view, one that should be embraced by producers and trade alike as the consumers love it!

I can quite understand why wine purists would shudder at the thought, but as I was taught to say in my early days as a wine buyer, if there is something you don’t like, just politely say "it’s not right for our target market".

However for a different target market it will be devoured, as the boys at Diemersfontein will attest to. They have been joined by many more in the local market with products such as Café Culture from KWV, Ja Mocha and Toffee Chunk from Simonsvlei, African Java from Van Loveren, Le Café from Clos Malverne, Cappuccino Pinotage from Boland, The Grinder, Mocha Java from Bellingham, and Barista from Bertus Fourie. This is evidence enough that the coffee / mocha style continues to grow and appeal to consumers and is not a flash in the pan.

What I think is really exciting is that this unique innovative style is a ‘homegrown’ South African creation and branding the wines with the various play on the coffee / chocolate flavour profile is telling the customer clearly what to expect. As some UK readers may remember from a DIY product some years ago "It does what it says on the tin" and so do these wines.

Three forward thinking retailers in the UK, who have listened to their customers and realised the SA market is on to something have launched their own versions. Tesco have Choccochino, Marks and Spencer have Mochatage and Direct Wines are launching The Chocolatier in April. So, in my view, it is well done to SA for pushing the envelope and doing something a bit unusual and creating a new wine category.
 
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Deterioration dam uoy era - 13 March 2012
This is a awful development - never thought a wine culture can be prostituted to such an extent.
At least - non of the mentioned producers above can be considered as a quality producer and would therefore never end up on my (and many others) dinner table!
Coffee Wines - technospeak Roenolog - 13 March 2012
I do not see any mention in any articles about these wines on how they are made and what causes the coffee character in the wines.

Few people know that the process is rather intricate and certain conditions have to be met before the coffee/mocha flavour appears. To mass produce these wines cannot be easy as the fermentation has to be done in the presence of heavliy toasted wood (maybe chips nowadays).

There also have been illegal additions of coffee to some wines, detected by the presence of wine-foreign caffeine.

Maybe Bertus can give us a sort of Review of the history behind the coffee Pinotage wines.
First step of the tasting ladder Kevin Kidson - 13 March 2012
I personally think that 'dam uoy era' has completely missed the boat. These wines will bring more new wine drinkers into our market than any other variety / style. We wine drinkers forget where we started - it is almost always with a sweet wine, an easy drinker. Then one day we have that 'aha' moment when we actually taste the blackberry or whatever and become wine tasters, not just drinkers - and these wines give it to our new wine drinkers the very first time they taste it. So, not only do they taste wine that they like, we also get them onto the first rung of the tasting ladder - and once we have someone tasting as opposed to drinking wine, then they are a wine drinker for life.
Red Liebfraumilch? Dieter - 14 March 2012
My concern is that coffee Pinotage will become South African varient of Blue Nun (easy to like for starters). When its drinkers are derided by those becoming more knowledgeable, by association SA's quality offerings will be as hard to sell to the middle market as Germany's were after the 80's.


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