The Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel is a standard vocabulary for describing coffee, published by the Specialty Coffee Association and revised in 2016 with the World Coffee Research Sensory Lexicon.
How it works
It reads from the center outwards, general to specific.
The center has broad categories — fruity, sour, green, roasted, spices, nutty, sweet, floral, other.
Moving outward, fruity divides into berry, dried fruit, citrus, other fruit. Berry divides into blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, strawberry.
You start broad and narrow down as far as you can honestly go.
Why it is useful
It gives you a path rather than demanding you produce a word from nowhere. “Fruity — berry — blueberry” is a sequence of easy decisions.
It also standardizes language. When two people say “citrus”, the wheel makes it likelier they mean the same thing.
What the notes are not
They are not additives. A bag saying blueberry has no blueberry in it. The compounds that make blueberries taste of blueberry occur in the coffee too, at low concentrations.
Using it
Taste something, work outward from the center, and stop when you are no longer sure. “Fruity” honestly is worth more than “blueberry” guessed.
The other half
The 2016 revision has an accompanying color scheme and a lexicon with reference standards — actual samples you can taste to calibrate.
Last reviewed 30 October 2026