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As a marketing strategy, “cupping” is straight from the wine-industry playbook. As

Published 7:00 am Monday, September 24, 2012

The rite of cupping has been around for centuries among coffee traders. But now, following a pattern already well-established by marketers of wine, olive oil, and the like, a highly technical evaluation protocol once reserved for industry pros is being pitched to consumers.
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The rite of cupping has been around for centuries among coffee traders. But now, following a pattern already well-established by marketers of wine, olive oil, and the like, a highly technical evaluation protocol once reserved for industry pros is being pitched to consumers.
The rite of cupping has been around for centuries among coffee traders. But now, following a pattern already well-established by marketers of wine, olive oil, and the like, a highly technical evaluation protocol once reserved for industry pros is being pitched to consumers.
At the cityaE™s aEœindieaE coffee shops, free public cuppings are being regularly offered. Like the in-store wine tastings they mimic, cuppings are intended to showcase everything SeattleaE™s artisan roasters are: small, passionate, aesthetically advanced, socially aware, personal.
TheyaE™re also meant to train us to be the customers these roasters dream of havingaE”customers equipped to appreciate the increasingly elaborate lengths to which coffee purists are going in order to secure the best beans.
Where Starbucks first sold the mass-market on the romance of Ethiopia and Sumatra, the new breed of coffee merchant is taking it even further.
At Stumptown, you donaE™t ask for a bag of aEœPanamanianaE anymore, darling. ItaE™s aEœPanama Duncan Estate,aE distinguished from Panama Don Pachi or Panama Esmerelda (batch #2).
Much as vintners display the appellation and vineyard on their bottles, the artisan roasters are selling their coffees based on the microregion or estate where the beans are grown. Coffee is the new wine.
With one critical difference though. We all get to open the same bottles of wine and potentially enjoy the same taste experience.
But the Achilles heel of cuppingaE”what makes it more an exercise in hype than culinary educationaE”is that itaE™s totally disconnected from the way every one of us actually drinks coffee.

As a marketing strategy, “cupping” is straight from the wine-industry playbook. As a means of enjoying coffee, it’s mostly hot air. Jonathan Kauffman’s feature story, on this week’s cover. All photos by Steven Miller.Published on December 1, 2008

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