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and Technology Department at the University of
California, Davis (UC Davis) to translate it into a
sunburst chart, what we know today as the SCA’s
Coffee Flavor Wheel.
One Darnley Road, an East London-based creative
design and communications agency was responsible
Triggering the Senses for final design of the wheel and choosing the appro-
priate hues for each flavor attribute. For example,
Charles Spence is an Oxford Professor of Exper- pinks were used for “sweet”, pastels for “medicinal”
imental Psychology & Director of the Crossmodal etc. in order to create strong visual associations. Com-
Research Laboratory. His research focuses on how a ing back to colors being used as sensorial triggers, the
better understanding of the human mind will lead to coffee flavor wheel is a great example of how that can
the better design of multisensory foods, products, be applied. The wheel is now used as a tool for training
interfaces, and environments in the future. In his book, coffee professionals that wish to heighten their sensi-
Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating, he com- tivity to different coffee flavors.
ments on how at various points in history, scientists Freda Yuan is three-time UK Cup Tasters Cham-
have confidently asserted that there is absolutely no pion and the author of Sip ‘n’ Slurp, a guide to expert
association between color and taste. And how on the coffee tasting. In her book, she explains that during
other extreme, there are some artists out there today our gastronomic experiences, after we have seen the
who are inviting the public to “taste the color”. He food or drink, we usually form a certain idea about
believes that neither side has got it quite right. Ac- what it will taste like, based on the color or the deco-
cording to him colors are linked with tastes, but even ration. According to Yuan, “most of the sensory infor-
so we cannot create a taste out of nowhere, simply by mation we gather is from our past eating experiences.
showing the appropriate color. The color could deceive us or alter our assumptions
The way I understand it is that the color is more about the food and beverage we are about to consume.
of a sensorial trigger that can help to shape, or nudge, Even things like packaging or restaurant design or
the taste experience in a particular direction. Let’s other visual cues can influence our taste experience.”
look at the Specialty Coffee Associations’s (SCA) of- Yuan’s words actually find resonance in Spence’s
ficial coffee flavor wheel as an example. Before devel- mouthwash example from his book, “A mouthwash
oping it, they decided to first build a lexicon of coffee manufacturer told me that their orange variant didn’t
flavor terms by surveying a bunch of coffee profes- taste as astringent to people as their regular blue va-
sionals. In her article, The evolution of the Coffee riety, despite the formulation of the active ingredients
Taster’s Flavor Wheel, Sarah Charles explains that the staying the same. You would probably be surprised to
World Coffee Research Sensory Lexicon is the product learn how many companies have come looking for help
of a collaboration between dozens of professional over the years, when their consumer panels and focus
sensory panelists, scientists, coffee buyers, and roast- groups tell them that their brands taste different, even
ers. It was developed by World Coffee Research though all that has changed is the color of the product
(WCR), the Sensory Analysis Center at Kansas State or pack. It makes no sense until you learn something
University, and the Specialty Coffee Association of about the rules of multisensory integration governing
America (SCAA). how the brain combines the senses. Here, I am think-
All these professionals tasted around 100 coffees ing of “sensory dominance” — where the brain uses
and identified their attributes over the course of a one sense to infer what is going on in the others.”
year. This became The World Coffee Research Sen- In cognitive neuroscience, multisensory integra-
sory Lexicon, and the basis of the new Flavor Wheel. tion is the study of how our brain makes sense of the
The lexicon classifies 110 flavor, aroma, and texture information it receives from different senses. When
features in coffee and offers terms for quantifying we see, smell, touch and taste something, these sens-
their intensity. That way, even if someone has never es work together to give us a complete picture (or in
tasted one of the descriptors on the wheel, they would this case, flavor) of what we are experiencing. In the
at least have a basic understanding of the flavor but case of coffee, the wheel example shows just how
looking it up on the lexicon. Once the lexicon was important color can be in influencing our perception
ready, the SCAA collaborated with the Food Science of flavor.

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