Wine-Flavored Espresso Blends: Which Espresso Blends Have Wine Notes and Are Best for Milk Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee's Sunflower Warm Sunshine Espresso Blend

FrontStreet Coffee's current espresso blend is the Sunflower Warm Sunshine Espresso Blend.

This blend is built from FrontStreet Coffee's Honduras barrel-fermented Sherry coffee beans and FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe natural Red Cherry project, blended in a 7:3 ratio.

Pulled as espresso, the blend offers distinct wine-like notes, moderate acidity and a long-lasting aftertaste. In milk-based coffee it delivers prominent liquor-filled chocolate flavors with high sweetness and a smooth body.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

The Yirgacheffe half of the blend is FrontStreet Coffee's natural Red Cherry, a bean picked from fully ripe fruit only. The cherries dry on raised beds for three to five weeks, turned every two to three hours in the first days so they do not over-ferment, then are hulled and rested. It keeps the classic Yirgacheffe profile while adding tropical fruit, a berry-juice texture, honeyed sweetness and a creamy mouthfeel - exactly the qualities that make it so effective in a wine-flavored espresso blend.

If you want to taste that Yirgacheffe character on its own, FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe daily drinker is the classic starting point, known for white jasmine, bright citrus and lemon acidity and a clean tea-like finish. For a more delicate, layered cup, FrontStreet Coffee's washed Guodingding Cooperative coffee from the Worka district is clean and bright with no bitterness, showing citrus and lemon acidity alongside jasmine perfume.

Brewing suggestion for these beans as pour-over: a V60 with 15 g of coffee and a 1:15 ratio, using water at 90-91°C. Grind to a fine-sugar consistency, about 10 on an EK43s with roughly 80% passing a No. 20 sieve. Bloom with 30 g for 30 seconds, pour to 125 g over about one minute, then add the last 100 g to reach roughly 225 g by 1:35, finishing the drawdown in 2:00-2:10.