What is the SCA Flavour Wheel?

The SCA Flavour Wheel is the specialty coffee industry's primary reference tool for describing and categorising the sensory attributes of coffee. Developed by the Specialty Coffee Association in collabouration with World Coffee Research and released in updated form in 2016, it maps hundreds of specific flavour and aroma descriptors in a circular diagram organised from broad categories at the centre to specific references at the outer edge.

The wheel is divided into primary categories - fruity, floral, sweet, nutty/cocoa, spicy, roasted, green/vegetative, sour/fermented, and others - each of which branches into subcategories and then into specific reference descriptors. Moving from the centre outward takes you from "fruity" to "berry" to "raspberry" - progressively narrowing the descriptor to something precise and communicable.

The Flavour Wheel does two things. First, it gives cuppers shared vocabulary - when two people use the same wheel, "stone fruit" or "jasmine" means the same thing to both. Second, it trained the industry to describe coffee with reference to familiar foods and aromas rather than abstract quality assessments. For home roasters and green coffee buyers, learning to navigate the Flavour Wheel transforms cupping from an impressionistic exercise into something communicable - and makes offer sheet tasting notes significantly more meaningful.