What are flavour notes in coffee?

Flavour notes are descriptive words used to communicate the sensory experience of a coffee - the tastes and aromas that the coffee reminds you of, drawn from a shared vocabulary of familiar foods, fruits, and flavours. They appear on green coffee offer sheets, roasted coffee packaging, and cupping notes, serving as a shorthand for what a coffee has to offer.

Common flavour note categories include fruit (citrus, stone fruit, berry, tropical), sweetness (caramel, brown sugar, honey), chocolate and nut, floral (jasmine, rose, bergamot), and spice. The SCA Flavour Wheel is the most widely used reference tool, mapping hundreds of specific descriptors across these categories.

Flavour notes are not ingredients - they describe what a coffee tastes like, not what's been added to it. A coffee described as "blueberry, dark chocolate, and cedar" contains none of those things; it contains compounds produced by the coffee plant during cultivation, processing, and roasting that happen to remind trained tasters of those references. For buyers evaluating green coffee, flavour notes provide useful guidance on character and market positioning - though they should always be verified by cupping rather than taken on faith from the offer sheet alone.