Forget Wine; Hipsters Flock to Coffee Tastings

No Comments | Written on August 17, 2012 at 1:00 pm, by Lesley Kennedy

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What? You want to go to a wine tasting? Oh, sweetie, that’s sooo last year. Don’t you know all the hipsters are passing on the chardonnay and embracing the coffee bean?

Yes, vino parties are out. “Cupping” is in.

OK, so it may be a pretty clunky-sounding term (and isn’t cupping some sort of massage technique, anyway?), but NPR reports it is the latest caffeinated trend, with folks swirling, smelling and sampling different roasts, deciphering one coffee’s “caramely” notes and another’s almost “arugula-like” flavor.

Pretentious? Your order is up.

At shops such as Artifact Coffee in Baltimore, Mars Café in Des Moines and Empire State South in Atlanta, customers are paying premium prices for sustainable, high-quality java. And people are willing to stand around sniffing little shot-glass-size portions of coffee, for, we guess, fun.

“Baristas are like the sommeliers of their industry,” Spike Gjerde of Artifact Coffee tells NPR, adding that more customers “appreciate coffee for its individual characteristics, as we do wine.”

We guess that’s find and dandy if you take your coffee black. But what about the sugar-and-cream crowd? Maybe someone will start a candy cupping, where you sample mochas, vanilla frappuccinos and caramel macciatos. We know, not hip, but definitely tasty.

For now, we’ll leave the cupping parties to the cool kids. Sure, we need our morning Starbucks jolt, but in the evenings, a wine buzz beats a caffeine buzz every time.