Describing coffee sensorially is a lot like elite sports. You train your palate, expand your repertoire, and become faster at identifying individual flavor notes. But not everyone can, is able to, or wants to do that. Certainly not the majority of consumers. A case for describing the body.
Cuppings, or professional coffee tastings, in which slurping, studying, and describing take place, are a multifaceted and partly creative process.
You meet people from various backgrounds who all bring different vocabularies for describing coffees. And if we're honest, most of us have a favorite description for certain taste triggers or flavor notes in coffee.
After the cupping, we collect these descriptions, compare and discuss them. A catalog of descriptions emerges, from which we take the most useful ones and want to pass them on. But if these are now green apple acidity, salted caramel, and ripe red grapes, most consumers will just shake their heads and describe the same coffee more as "different, special, and unusual."
In rare cases, consumers like specialty coffee right away. Specialty coffee needs time for communication. Or focus on body.
Mouthfeel vs. flavor notes
If someone has never tasted salted caramel, how are they supposed to decipher it in such a complex product as coffee? Or have you ever recognized a person on the street that you didn't know before?
Flavor notes are harder to describe than sensory impressions. We all feel those in different intensities. Body and mouthfeel (see also href="https://www.kaffeemacher.ch/blog/mundgefuehl/"article on the topic of mouthfeel) often differ dramatically between individual coffees and serve as an indicator of quality. The mouthfeel of good coffee differs greatly from mediocre coffee, and even more so from lower quality coffee.
I like to draw coffee drinkers' attention to the mouthfeel, the weight, and the creaminess of the coffee when drinking it. We should not forget that not everyone does this automatically. Then you can discuss whether the sensation is more like the consistency of tea or rather more like the consistency of honey.
describing the consistency of a coffee is usually easier for consumers than creatively expressing themselves about flavor notes.
A fellow judge once called me a "body fetishist" because I place so much emphasis on describing the body of coffees. But I am convinced that with an accurate description of the mouthfeel, you can appeal to more people than with creative descriptions of flavor notes.
