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Medium-bodied, layers of flavor, from black currant or blackberry to sweet, tropical fruit, and prized for its bright and refreshing quality.

Tasting notes for a nice Cab? Perhaps a unique Chianti? How about these two:

Full-bodied with virtually no acidity but an intensity that lingers in your mouth. Concentrated spicy, herbal notes and an earthy aroma.

A wonderful, straightforward blend. The bright flavor is tempered with a round smoothness and ends with a clean finish.

Despite the familiar sound, these aren’t wine tasting notes. Instead, these the comments come from the package of three bags of coffee I recently purchased. Specifically, they were from Starbucks’ Kenya, Sumatra, and House blends.

These notes got me thinking – should I drink coffee more like I drink wine? I really enjoy a good cup of joe, but I know far less about it than the wine that I consume. In fact, though, coffee can be understood and appreciated in many of the same ways as wine. For those of us interested in terroir and fermentation techniques, it’s interesting to taste how characteristics like provenance and preparation can affect coffee.

It turns out that a coffee culture very similar to wine culture exists. Coffee aficionados’ excitement over unusual beans, interesting blends, and innovative brewing techniques will all sound familiar to wine geeks. Coffee lovers, though, get much cooler toys – there really is no equivalent in the wine world for a $1,300 espresso machine.

Next time you drink a good cup of coffee, try describing it the way you would a glass of wine. The vocabulary is strikingly similar. As with wine, the aroma, mouth-feel, and finish are all important. Experience tasting wine also lends itself to identifying and appreciating a coffee’s specific flavor profile.

Pay attention to where the beans are from to develop a sense of different blends’ terroir. Experienced coffee drinkers can often identify where the beans are from based on characteristic flavors. African and Arabian coffees, for example, are characteristically floral and acidic, while Indonesian and other Asian brews tend have a more full-bodied, earthy taste with lower acidity.

See how the taste of the same beans varies when brewed using a standard drip machine versus a French press. After buying a French press a few years ago, I can vouch for the fact that it makes far superior coffee – richer and more flavorful – than just about any automatic drip machine. True coffee snobs advocate the use of pour-over filter cones, woodneck brewers, and other complex, single cup techniques to enjoy coffee at its best.

Coffee cupping, similar to wine tasting, is also growing in popularity. As defined by Wikipedia, cupping involves “deeply sniffing the coffee, then loudly slurping the coffee so it spreads to the back of the tongue.” Sounds familiar.

Specific coffee and food pairings are also increasingly common. Having a basic breakfast of toast or cereal? Pair it with a light Central or South American coffee. Something spicy like a breakfast burrito? Better to choose a more intense, fruit-forward Kenyan blend.

However, while there are many similarities between how the two beverages are enjoyed, the industries around each are very different. At Coffeegeek.com, Shanna Goldman discussed why the industries differ and what specialty coffee producers could learn from the wine industry. Most notably, at $5 – $20 per bag, coffee is a much more affordable hobby!