28.07.2019

Coffee and wine and football

At the recent expo, World of Coffee, in Berlin, there was a bookstore, where the Speciality Coffee Association was selling books on the coffee theme, of course. And as I noticed, one of best selling  books was this one:

 

 “Coffee and wine”. When I saw it, I immediately recalled my blog post, "About Coffee and Wine":

 http://gastra.com.ua/en/kofein/blog/pro-kofe-i-vino/

 I wrote the post summer of 2015, it describes events of 2012, that time exhibition "World of coffee", that was then held in Vienna. There, in Vienna, I’d met the winemaker. As you can see, the issues of the interaction between the coffee world and the wine world have bothered Peter Vader-Malberg (the winemaker) and me (the coffee maker) back in 2012 and even earlier. At that time, I was not only in the coffee business for almost 10 years, but for several years I have been a "garage winemaker". That is, combining coffee and wine in practice. The combination started quite unexpectedly. And the catalyst (or the last drop, that filled my bowl of patience) was… You won't believe it, but the football game became the catalyst.

 It was July 9, 2006, when the final game of the World Cup was held in Berlin. In that day afternoon I finished roasting coffee in our then-lightly-shade roasting "garage", which was at that time in a rented room on the outskirts, in the next yard on Rymarska street, Kharkiv.

 

 

I brought the roasted coffee to Kofein (Rymarska), and of course started to cup the coffee. Cupping the coffee I thought whether to watch the World Cup finals here at the coffee shop (back then there were times when we had TVs in the coffee shop) or to go home and watch there. People started cramming into the shop, I didn't want to sit for two hours at a wooden bar-stand chair, surrounded by noisy fans on all sides, so I went home. On the way, I jumped into the newly opened Rost on Klochkivska (then it was the most fashionable shop in Kharkiv) to buy a bottle of good wine (worthy of the final). Ukrainian wines did not inspired me much, at that time it had been just the peak of the release of so called "second order derivative" (that is, the "wine" made by "fermenting" a solution of sugar in water to which grape squeezes were added to the "smell", and beet juice for color, glycerin for the body, and a bit of alcohol for the kick), by big Ukrainian monopoly wineries, and drinking this  hog-wash, even during the World Cup final - I did not feel worthy of such an event. I also didn't want to buy French or Italian wine either, because France and Italy were playing in the final - that's enough for them. So I chose the bottle, which was probably the most expensive of the Georgian wines, for something about $20. At home I sat down in a chair by the TV, at the beginning of the grand final, with the sounds of Marseilles, opened the wine, poured into glasses, tried - and my indignation was off limits. The wine was  terrible. Worse, than even the Crimean "wines from the factory" which can be remembered, those "inks" in plastic bottles, which "hospitable Crimeans" were selling to holidaymakers. If there was a Georgian "winemaker" nearby, I would probably have done to him the same thing, which Zidane did to the prick in that game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF4iWIE77Ts

My frustration was terrible. Well, it's really a horror - to stay sober (having a bottle on the table) the entire match of the finals, and Zidane was then kicked out of the field. The wine was untouched until the end of the match and was poured.

 Don't think I was such a great wine gourmet. In my younger years, I worked in vineyards, where in October, picking grapes, I used to drink "young wine" this very year of crop, that is, unbearable turbid :

 

 

 

I even tried (in micro-doses, solely for research purposes) "White Strong", "SunGift", "PortWjne 77", "Agdam", and other creations of Soviet Communizm Chemists, from whom miraculously survived “soviet-anonists” still erecting with cirrhosis and gastrit. There were also variants of "home-made wine for sale, for holidaymakers" with carbide and tobacco infusion (to make it "kick" better). In my student time in dorms people drink every liquid, which could flame. As now I remember the drunken cry of my classmate (and sometimes the "drink-partner", in the early 1980s), who, having received a good dose of purl from "The wine point on Obilnoy", went out swinging into the dark dormitory corridor and shouted in a terrible voice: "For all the dick stink!!! They Sold Russia to the Bolshevik Jews !!! Come on !!! Let’s drink !!! Life is running out !!! "

Well, you see, I was a very unpretentious person and could drink almost anything. But in my bright childhood in Romny, I spent almost ten years in sports school, seriously playing football, and the World Cup finals for me are the most sacred holidays. So to drink such an abomination on such a day, moreover, for my own $ 20, was below my level of disgusting disdain for myself. And when I poured off that "hog-wash" - I looked at the grape bush outside the window. I planted it a few years before, it was a red table grape. That moment I decided to try to make the wine myself, so not to depend on those damn fakes.

That time in books and on the "Russian-speaking" Internet I`d found only traditionally-soviet recipes for home-made wine, something like this: "crush 5 kg of grapes, add 5 kg of sugar and leave in a warm place when it ferments - add 3 liters of water and 2 kg sugar and place under air-lock". I made the first wine according to such recipes and got something so "vinegar-sweet", which could have been better than that "Georgian", but it was still shit, though sweet. I understood, that I was doing something wrong, I wanted to experiment, but you know - grapes only ripen once a year and you can do wine-making experiments at the same frequency. And here, somewhere in the period "between experiments" I have found among a heap of foreign second-hand books (at that time it was brought to us many) one old (1971) inconspicuous book, here is this:

 

  I bought it "by the weight of waste paper" for 1 hryvnia ($0.1), because try to show me somebody, who needs a book on winemaking in English, when our (former) USSR wine is made by "true-industrialists-proFFesioAnals", and winemaking books in russian are scattered everywhere in tons, issued in millions of copies. Having been  browsing 10 pages of this book - I was just STRUCK. If at that moment I was given a machine gun and got order to shoot all the authors of those Soviet books - then I would have shot, without the slightest hesitation, still kicking them by feet. Because you have just to imagine, how many sugars and fruits have been spoiled, thanks to their stupid bastard scribble, how many livers are trapped by their swill - !!! Horror swept me away from the realization of one of the most horrific mysteries in human history.

In the English language book there was step by step instructions, with several simple tabs, there was explained how and by what fermentation takes place, how much sugar is needed for 1 "degree" of alcohol in wine, how many (and why) these "degrees" can it potentially contain. In general, the basics of winemaking there were laid out on ten small pages of text. Using keywords from the book - I quickly found an online store (in Belgium),

https://www.brouwland.com/

 where I bought some of the equipment (because even scales that could weight up to 0.1 grams back then were still not sold to us), yeast for winemaking (apparently these yeast mistakenly consider it a "powder" from which they make some mythical "powder wine"), plastic air-locks, which do not break with touch. And most importantly what I bought there, was a marvel of Western technologies, similar to what the powerful industry of the USSR  failed to do, which was then riveting millions of tons of cast iron, launching rockets into space and nuclear submarines at the pole, but could not make toilet paper. This marvel of Western technology - so called hydrometer, such an elongated glass tube with a "weight" inside, which could accurately measure the density of grape juice, that is, the amount of sugar contained in it.

 

 Knowing the amount of sugar in the juice - the winemaker (Western, not Soviet) knows how many "degrees" his wine will have after fermentation and if the sugar is not enough, then it can be added. And if it is enough, it is not to add and save sugar for the country, to save money - to launch rockets, rolls of toilet paper, submarines, treat liver cirrhosis, support the Cuban revolution, etc.

Of course, besides these elementary problems in winemaking there are still many secrets and "nuances", but only with this deal - I made the wine that finally was like a wine.

A few more years gone - and in Ukraine we've got many small quality wineries. And sometime in 2018, the government removed many restrictions, that had prevented the development of small-scale winemaking. And now a whole new wave of development of small winemakers has started across Ukraine. Who wanted - even noticed it and tried these wines from new people of modern times.

Much has changed in the Ukrainian coffee world during this time. Not only in Ukrainian. At the grandiose exhibition “World of Coffee” in Berlin (from which I started this story) I found the aforementioned “Coffee and Winery” in a bookstore and went to the next exhibition hall. There were a huge variety of coffee everywhere, various coffee gadgets, glasses, irons - and suddenly I seen this stand:

 

I stopped, looked again, and, not believing my eyes, began "to waddle the rolls" at my head, where some cognitive dissonance had begun. I was not just impressed by these two pretty French women. I was struck by the inscription on their background: "Lallemand". I kind of knew it, but I couldn't understand why it was here, at the coffee show. Because "Lallemand" is the name of the producer of yeast cultures for wine production, which I first bought back then (after the 2006 FIFA World Cup) in the Belgian online store, thanks to the English book of the 1971 edition, which was lying in the dusty far corner of the Ukrainian book second-hand. The girls noticed my surprise and explained, that yes, this is the same Lallemand company, producer of yeast for winemaking. They have been doing this for many decades,  have more than 3,000 cultures of such yeast in their collection. And for several years, they have been producing yeast for the fermentation of coffee berries, they already have about 200 cultures and coffee fermented by their yeast has even won the Cup Of Excellence in some countries. As you can see, the authors of the combination “Coffee and wine” have somehow correctly combined…

 On the last night in Berlin, after three days at a coffee show - coffee was already more than enough for me. And I was sitting with the glass of the magnificent, absolutely peculiar  German Riesling, from the Nahe valley. The wine bar where I sat - located in an outhouse in the courtyard, not far from the same stadium where Zidane's team lost the match in the finals in 2006, but won sympathy from around the world.

  

 

This is hard to believe, but in very similar outhouse in the yard at Rimarska, where I roasted coffee before the same match in 2006 - now it is on sale the yeast for wine of the same Lallemand, that struck me in Berlin so much. Now there is a winery stuff shop. It was opened several years ago by fugitives from the "Russian world" from Lugansk.

 I hope, now you know even better, that we know, that life is too short to drink bad coffee ... and wine. :)

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