Yo-
Arjun- If you mean that Kenyan coffees and Burgundian wines are both too expensive, then yes.
One thing to understand is that there is much more to coffee roasting than simply light and dark. There are 120 (ish) different reactions that happen in the first 8 minutes. They happen at different times or some may or may not occur depending on the roast. We generally think of coffee roasting in terms of light and dark, when the roast style, or journey from green to brown, is also important.
But back to light and dark for simplicitys sake-- Acidity for me is a lot of what gives flavor and differentiability to each coffee. As a coffee gets roasted darker many of the compounds and shit begin to break down and carbon is introduced. This can 'homogenize' the flavor to just "coffee flavor". When people say they like "chocolately" coffee I feel like they don't like coffee, just as a buttery chardonnay drinker just doesn't like chardonnay. At this point you are tasting the process more than the coffee itself, such as drinking a wine of an irrigated vineyard that is chaptalized and inoculated and pumped with shit tons of sulphur and oak etc.
Additionally coffee that is roasted quite light and pulled far before any carbon introduction lacks development in many ways and tastes bright, green, astringent etc. Light roasted coffee is definitely what I consider the coffee I drink to be, but so much of it can be crap. I like natural wines, but so many natural wines can be natural just for naturals sake and taste not so good.
As far as how coffee fits into the whole wine thread thing: I've been lucky enough to serve light roasted coffee to people who like dark roasted coffee and to serve light, fresh honest wines to people who like super extracted lab experiments. I've been lucky enough to serve the same people actually, and its been quite a fun thing to observe. There is generally a group of people who don't necessarily know much (not in a bad way) and ask in the morning for the darkest coffee and in the evening for the boldest wine. These people seem to hate acidity and often times you have to tell them to shut their eyes and their mouth (nicely) and give them something that they shouldn't think of as wine/coffee, and they tend to like it.
Then there is a group of people who know quite a bit and immediately start naming off what parts of costa rica they have been to and how they are still so jet lagged from flying back in from provence last week. Generally you have the same approach, shut up (nicely) drink this, enjoy.
Then there are people who don't know a damn thing (which i dont either) and just want something enjoyable and want to trust someone to give them something enjoyable. They shell out the same $12 for a glass of wine or $3.50 for a cup of coffee and love it or hate it blindly. Those are some of my favorites.
Anywho I've been talking to three different people and writing this at the same time so I apologize for any nonsensical aspects. Here's to honest wine, good coffee, and cheap mexican beer.
