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8 Flavor & tasting

SCA Flavor Wheel

The Specialty Coffee Association's standardized vocabulary for describing coffee flavor: a circular chart organizing notes from broad categories to specific descriptors.

  • Also called: Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel, Flavor Wheel
  • Availability: Specialty

The SCA (originally SCAA) Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel was first published in 1995 and revised in 2016 in collaboration with World Coffee Research and UC Davis. It organizes flavors hierarchically (moving from broad categories like "fruity" or "roasted" inward toward specific descriptors like "blackberry" or "tobacco") and is the lingua franca of cupping notes. When a Brooklyn menu card lists "stone fruit, brown sugar, bergamot," those terms come straight off the wheel.

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