How to read a tasting note

A tasting note is a compressed description of what a coffee does in the cup. It is not a list of ingredients, and the coffee does not contain blueberry or jasmine or brown sugar. Those are reference points: flavors in the same frequency range that help locate what you are tasting.

Della writes notes like: cedar, baker's chocolate, a long earthy finish. That is 3 things, all concrete, none of them romantic. The note tells you the register is dark and dry and grounded, not bright and fruited. From that you know whether this is your cup before you order it.

Learning to read a note is learning to match a shorthand to a sensation. If you taste something and cannot name it, name the things near it: is it sweet or dry, bright or dark, clean or complex. From those 3 questions you can usually find the word. The word is a tool, not a grade.