Coffee more popular than wine in the UK

The coffee industry is now worth over double the value of the on-trade wine industry in the UK, with three new coffee shops opening every day in Britain.

As reported by Harper’s Bazaar, the number of coffee shops in the UK is set to overtake the number of pubs by 2030.

The Wine and Spirits Trade Association values the on-trade wine industry at £4.2 billion, and the on-trade spirits industry at £5.8 billion, while the coffee industry in the UK is estimated to be worth £8.9 billion.

A staggering 2.3 billion cups of coffee are served in the UK each year, with the value of the industry rising by 12% in the last year. The research implies that coffee culture may soon overtake the UK’s long loved drinking culture, with pubs closing at a similar rate to coffee shops opening.

Clean living millennials drink less alcohol than the previous generation and are ditching pub crawls in favour of juice crawls and drunkenness for mindfulness.

“The UK has embraced coffee culture in a phenomenal way that has seen the industry grow and thrive to the size it is today – and it’s continuing,” Jeffrey Young, founder of UK Coffee Week, told Harper’s Bazaar.

“Through the combination of coffee-shop growth and the premiumisation of at-home coffee, the UK’s coffee offer is one of the best in the world,” he added.

Combining the best of both worlds, Napa Valley café owner Rick Molinari recently teamed up with local winemakers in the California region to launch the world’s first red wine-infused coffee.

Molinari spent over two years developing the recipe for Molinari Private Reserve with John Weaver of Wild Card Roasters.

Carefully selected coffee beans “relax” in a Napa Valley red wine to absorb its flavours and aromas then get dried and hand-roasted in small batches.

The result is an alcohol free “rich full-bodied coffee with a blueberry note” that works well as a filter coffee, iced coffee, espresso or latte.