This year’s move from the 2004 SCA cupping form to the Coffee Value Assessment (CVA) is being presented as an overdue modernisation. But it raises a deeper question that has shaped the industry for decades: who actually gets to define value. For years, one organisation in a consuming-country context has set the standards that producing countries must meet. The CVA shifts the framework, but it doesn’t fully shift that power.
How the old form shaped taste worldwide
The 2004 system worked well for washed Arabicas. Bright, clean, structured cups sat at the centre of the scoring logic. That created a shared language for traders and buyers, but it also created a hierarchy. Naturals, honeys, extended fermentations and experimental lots were judged against a washed benchmark that they were never meant to match. If your coffee didn’t fit the template, it was already starting from behind.
Because that form became the global reference point, it also influenced what producers were encouraged to grow and how they processed their coffee. A flavour preference originating in North America and Europe quietly became an international definition of quality
What the CVA changes - and what it doesn’t
• Physical looks at the raw material - defects, colour, moisture, screen size. It is the most objective lens.
• Descriptive maps what’s in the cup using ten consistent sensory categories. This is the backbone of shared language.
• Affective finally acknowledges personal preference. Instead of hiding subjectivity behind a single score, the CVA makes space for it.
• Extrinsic accepts that the story, place, culture, ethics and identity around a coffee influence how it is valued in real markets.
By splitting these dimensions, the CVA moves away from the idea that one tasting score can represent the entire worth of a coffee.
This is progress - but it still reflects a consuming-country perspective on how value should be organised and recorded.
What research reveals about who really decides quality
Recent studies from the SCA’s Coffee Science Foundation and World Coffee Research explored how cuppers actually use the old form. The findings challenge the idea that calibration creates objectivity:
• Individual cuppers were very consistent with themselves
• But not consistent with each other
• Preferences drove scoring patterns far more than the form suggested
• One cupper consistently ranked coffees in almost the opposite order to the rest - yet with excellent internal consistency
Under the old calibration model, that cupper would have been judged “wrong.”
Under the CVA logic, that cupper simply represents a different market’s preference.
This is the most profound implication of the CVA, and the one with the biggest political weight. If preferences vary widely between regions, languages and markets, why are those preferences filtered through one centralised institution?
The tension at the heart of this shift
• Learning the new system will be expensive
• Access to training is concentrated in consuming countries
• Most producers will adopt the system not because it reflects their worldview, but because the market demands they stay legible within SCA standards
• The SCA’s financial model depends heavily on education revenue, which may deepen centralisation
So while the CVA is more inclusive on paper, the structure surrounding it remains top-down.
It invites more ways to recognise value - but it doesn’t transfer the power to define value.
A bottom-up perspective the industry still hasn’t embraced
Producers are already creating sensory value that doesn’t fit historic scoring templates. They are innovating with process, adapting to climate pressures and developing flavour profiles that reflect their environments. Many producing countries have their own sensory traditions, flavour lexicons and market preferences. These rarely shape the global standard.
The CVA begins to recognise extrinsic value - but it does so within a structure authored outside origin.
The real shift would be global cupping systems that are co-created with producing countries, not simply revised for them.
Where this leaves us now
The CVA is an important evolution. It widens what can be understood as quality, especially for coffees that fall outside traditional washed profiles. It makes subjectivity visible. It acknowledges culture, environment and context.
But it also highlights an imbalance that sits at the centre of specialty coffee: the power to define value still lies far from where coffee is grown.
The next challenge - and perhaps the more meaningful one - is imagining a system where producers, local institutions and consuming markets share equal influence over how quality is defined and rewarded.
