This Is Not a Drill: Wine-Infused Coffee Exists
You no longer have to choose.
The next time you’re trying to decide whether to meet a friend for coffee or a glass of wine, you may want to consider a third option: both at once in the same cup.
Because someone has created wine-infused coffee.
Napa Valley-based Molinari Private Reserve claims to be the first company to infuse coffee beans with wine, explaining on its website that the process took company founder Rick Molinari, working with master coffee roaster John Weaver, of Wild Card Roasters, two and a half years of experimentation to get right.
Molinari, who also runs the Napa coffee shop Molinari Caffe, tells FN Dish he introduced his wine locally in 2013 and has been working in recent months to scale it up for broader distribution. It’s currently available in several shops around the U.S. as well as online. Molinari says he hopes, in time, to expand into Canada and overseas.
To make Molinari Private Reserve, coffee beans are soaked in a “special house made red” wine – “absorbing the wine’s nose and history” – and then dried and small-batch roasted by hand. This process produces a “rich” and “full-bodied” flavor with a “blueberry note” that is actually, in the end, alcohol free, according to the Molinari Private Reserve website, where a half-pound bag of beans can be ordered for $19.95.
Preparation in a French Press or drip brew is recommended, as is the addition of milk to bring “the wine taste out first, then the balance of coffee second.”
Refrigerating leftovers for cold consumption is also suggested. “Much like wine, the cooler MPR gets, the more the coffee breathes and opens,” according to the site.
Originally available in caffeinated form only, MPR is now available in decaf as well. Molinari says he prefers the latter “because the decaffeinated bean is drier so it soaks up more of the liquid.”
Also in the works: Molinari has been making bon-bons, chocolate, ice cream and rubs out of the wine-infused coffee beans.
Wine-infused coffee chocolate? Let’s all just take a moment to absorb the nose and history of that concept. Whoa.
Photo courtesy of Molinari
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