Serving People Serving Coffee Since 2005
Issue link: http://baristamagazine.epubxp.com/i/609699
TERROIR, VARIETY, NOTES, PROCESS, even "vintage"—if a lot of the terms we use to describe specialty coffee sound similar to those used to describe wine, it's no coincidence: Specialty coffee has drawn heavily from the wine world's influence in the development of its sensory language, and even marketing strategy in the café. In fact, the Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel, developed and released by then– Specialty Coffee Association of America executive director Ted Lingle in the early 1990s, was fundamentally inspired by the Wine Aroma Wheel created in 1984 by Ann C. Noble, a former sensory chemist and professor in the Viticulture and Enology Department at the University of California at Davis. Anyone watching the latest barista championships might also notice that more and more competition- level baristas are serving espresso and other coffee beverages in flutes, stemware, and other types of glasses normally reserved for a full-bodied Cabernet or a sparkling Cava. While we have leaned on wine's sensory lexicon to break our descriptive language through with customers, do the comparisons help or hurt us as we grow and progress as an industry? Is there a way to cast a wider net with our descriptive terms, to reach new or developing demographics, or to simply create a totally new and completely coffee- specific vocabulary? Maybe it's time to crack open the ol' thesaurus and reevaluate what we talk about when we talk about coffee. Wine about It Certainly the comparisons we've historically drawn to wine have made a great deal of sense in some ways: Both products are made from a single ingredient, and that ingredient comprises one or several species and a multitude of varieties; processing and fermentation techniques have direct impact on flavor; and people go bananas over terroir, insisting that this or that producing country is the best. The two intoxicating (albeit in opposite ways) beverages also share a kind of historical similarity, in that both have made a transition from being a working-class drink to something more elevated, joining the upper echelons of haute cuisine. Wine went from the center of the common man's dinner table and religious celebration to filling the chalices of kings and restaurant critics alike; specialty coffee might be a little later to the haute game, but as industry professionals, we are currently and actively engaged in bridging the gap between the bottomless-cup drinkers and the Gesha connoisseurs. Language has always been on the front lines of that struggle in both liquid arenas—which is precisely what inspired Professor Noble to develop a tool to facilitate communication and sensory description within wine, a beverage which (like coffee) contains an often overwhelming number of individual aromatic compounds, which create a dynamic, and difficult to describe, flavor experience. "The goal was to get people to communicate," she says about the inspiration behind the Wine Aroma Wheel. "People had these cute terms in the wine world—like 'middle of the palate,' which, do you mean physically in the middle or temporally in the middle, because the tongue doesn't have GPS—and there are people who want to keep wine laden with mystique. They think that what's esoteric about wine is what makes it appealing, and I think that's what makes it off-putting." One of the things Prof. Noble sought to achieve with her wheel was a kind of visual representation of the most commonly detected notes in the glass: "By doing descriptive analysis, you're really focusing on deciphering the words that are appropriate for that wine. To learn the words, it's easier to have someone present them to you, just like crayons. This is blue, and this is green, and this is apricot, and this is vanilla," she says. The wheel's colorful nature is somewhat reminiscent of this, like a box of the most delicious crayons imaginable. "We are very visually cued," she continues. "You can tell a strawberry by seeing one much faster than you can by smelling it. If you have a fake flavored thing, you need the visual clue of pink to know it's going to have a berry smell, because it lacks that authenticity. You don't smell the bell pepper in the Sauvignon Blanc because you can't see the damned thing. So you have to learn to identify the smell without the visual clue." Like the coffee wheel it inspired, the descriptors on Prof. Noble's wheel are organized by type and given colors to draw the eye. They are also, in a sort of behind-the-scenes way, more scientific than is obvious at first blush ("blush"—see what I did there?), as the terms contained in both relate back to chemical, enzymatic, and, in some cases, mysterious-but-definitely-there reactions and compounds that create particular notes and sensations. Some grape varieties create plummy or spicy wines, just like some coffee types will be more citrus-fruity and others stone-fruity. In comparing coffee to wine, however, and in borrowing its lexicon, we miss out on several key elements of the coffee experience, all of which impact the relationship we have with the flavors in the cup: Roasting, of course, and brewing as well, but maybe most of all, we run the risk of alienating and intimidating people the same way "fancy schmancy" wine descriptors turn folks away from corks and bottles and back to boxes and cans. Eat your words Christopher Schooley, "coffee sorcerer" with Coffee Shrub (www. coffeeshrub.com), longtime coffee roaster and Roasters Guild leader, and, relatively recently, the malt man behind the independent craft maltier Troubadour Maltings, thinks a lot about descriptive language— s e n s o r y d e s c r i p t i o n s w e u s e w i t h c o f f e e s e n s o r y d e s c r i p ti o n s w e u s e w i t h coffee c o n s u m e r s , w h y n o t d e v e l o p a n e n t i r e ly spec i f i c h t d l t i l if i l a n g u a g e f o r c o f f e e ? 70 barista magazine