What are flavor notes?

A good way to think about tasting unique flavors in your coffee is : this reminds me of pineapple ... cocoa ... caramel ... etc. We are not adding pineapples or cocoa to your beans, but the bean itself has naturally occurring flavors that remind the drinker of other things you've eaten or tasted before. Coffee is the most complex food we consume, with 2-3 times the number of flavor chemicals as wine. In fact, when you note cardamom or pear in your coffee, it is because that unique coffee bean contains flavor chemicals that cardamom or pear bear.

Training your palette to identify these unique flavor components definitely takes time. There are people who make a career out of this task. While most of us taste for fun, that's exactly the point. Make your coffee tasting a fun experience. It may just be that you will begin to pull out flavor notes from your cup.

To get you started, here are all the flavor notes in all of our coffees. Click on a flavor component to see all the coffees that have that note. On product pages, the description will include all the flavor notes that are in that coffee.