Sensory & Glossary · 5 min read
The Flavour Wheel – Putting Taste into Words
«Tastes like... coffee?» If you want to name aromas, one tool helps: the flavour wheel. It sorts hundreds of notes and turns a vague hunch into concrete words.
What the flavour wheel is
The Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel, developed by the SCA and World Coffee Research, arranges coffee aromas in a colour wheel: broad families in the centre, ever finer notes towards the edge. It helps you close in, step by step, on what you smell and taste.
From broad to fine
You work from the inside out: first the big family – fruity, nutty, floral? – then more precisely: fruity → berry → blueberry. That turns «somehow fruity» into a clear description.
The big families
- Fruity – berry, citrus, tropical fruit.
- Nutty & cocoa – almond, hazelnut, chocolate.
- Floral – jasmine, rose, orange blossom.
- Sweet – caramel, honey, vanilla.
- Spicy & roasty – cinnamon, tobacco, toast.
In short: The flavour wheel arranges coffee notes from broad families in the centre to fine aromas at the edge. A tool for naming taste – from «fruity» to «blueberry».
Taste it