(WSJ) - WINE IS COMPLICATED. Or so most oenophiles are taught to believe. And yet wine has become more and more accessible over the years, thanks in part to the 100-point scoring system that allows wine drinkers to buy by the numbers—not to mention all those “Dummies” guides. Meanwhile, coffee, the beverage of diners and truck stops, has grown more complicated as specialty coffee purveyors take it to ever more intricate levels of connoisseurship.

Starbucks was the first to introduce a new language to coffee drinkers, including a much more complex way to order a simple cup of joe: Venti, Grande, Tall. Coffee lovers today are expected to know the difference between coffee regions, growers and brewing methods. And whether you make your small-batch Blue Mountain with a pour-over filter or your cup of bulletproof in a Chemex has become an all-important fact. It’s gotten to the point that I’ve begun to wonder if coffee has become even more complicated than wine.

To find out, I asked a wine expert and a coffee expert to join me for a tasting and talk last month in Seattle, where American coffee culture and Starbucks were both born. I metErik Liedholm, wine director of Seattle’s John Howie Restaurant Group, and Andrew Linnemann, Starbucks vice president of global procurement, in a glass-walled, aroma-free room at Starbucks’s headquarters. (The smell of coffee is unsurprisingly pervasive in the building.)

Mr. Liedholm brought along three wines, all from great producers, for his part in the show-and-tell: the 2010 Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru, 2012 Emmerich Knoll Vinothekfullung Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Wachau and 2009 Joh. Jos. Prüm Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Kabinett. Mr. Linnemann contributed the Starbucks House Blend and two small-production coffees from some of the company’s best growers: Paradeisi and Ethiopia Bitta Farm.

Mr. Linnemann tastes, or “cups” as they say in the coffee trade, between 200 and 400 coffees each day between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. Mr. Liedholm’s sampling is a comparatively modest 70 or so wines a week, although he noted that the number can be larger if he attends a trade tasting or wine event. Both men spit while tasting, of course.