My (ex)girlfriend whipped me in a little Nez du Cafe competition we had. I could probably whip her in real-coffee identification, since I have cupped lots with George Howell. But, if she practiced like Jim suggested, she could probably beat me any day... not that it is a competition (it is just fun).

Also, "unicorns" are fewer when the coffee is of high quality (not just in name and price).

Unless we all major in coffee, grow up in the same homes and study in the same (coffee) school, there will always be various interpretations. I'd argue that wildly various interpretations of coffee is not good, but it is what we're faced with.

Nick wrote:But keep in mind, Bernie, the Le Nez du Cafe kit, though impressive in many ways, is still a collection of artificially-produced aromas from a chemical company. To illustrate this point, you need look no further than the vial #34, "Roasted Coffee."

There also is a frustrating amount of variation from production lot to production lot, and the aromas fade and/or frustratingly change over time.

Point is, it's hard to take that kit, hand someone a vial, and expect truly accurate correlation between the aroma in the vial and what it's supposed to replicate.

The kit certainly has it's limitations when it comes to accuracy. It is very useful for getting folks used to identifying known fragrances and recalling the name. Like standing in front of a pitching machine. It doesn't do a very good job of mimicking the guy standing on the mound glaring at you, but it gets you used to being 2 inches from a ball traveling at 90mph. The kit is good for giving folks confidence in their recognition abilities and in expanding their vocabulary.

I will just add that learning how to perceive certain descriptors in coffee (and music) seems to have changed how I perceive, think and feel on a profound level. I think it built some new pathways in my brain (not scientifically verified). Many brains are probably born with those pathways, but my brain certainly didn't have them. Just one more reason to push onself to study goats and unicorns.

Sorry for the awkward tangent.

Arpi wrote:"reality cannot be grasped directly because it is available only through perceptions of reality which are representations of it in the mind."

Here is a possible model of the taste of coffee that can form a pseudo structure to try to understand it.

We can make three dimensions. The first dimension is where things like electrons colliding and strange things happen. It is a dimension with infinite properties and where infinite dynamic processes happen. This is what the term reality would be in the quote above.

The second dimension is what we see as happening. What we see is finite because we are only able to _recognize_ finite characteristics. This dimension filters the first one by the importance of characteristics we seek or are able to see.

The third dimension is our farther verbal abstraction to the second dimension, communicating by language.

So the second dimension is an abstraction of the first dimension, and the third dimension is an abstraction of the second one. In the second dimension we convert infinite characteristics into finite abstractions so that we can deal with them.

How is this related to coffee flavor and their verbal descriptors? by the way we "recognize" flavors. The act of recognizing is like an abstraction filter. Each person could have form a different one. The third dimension (verbal) can influence the second one because they both have the same nature. They both are abstractions. For example, the name of a flavor can alter the recognition filter and teach what to look for, see or taste.

Cheers

I think you have to look at it both ways.

Coffee is a complexe product where flavor is consistently developping and evolving threw the process, from varietal, harvest to process, to roasting and brewing.

The best comparison out there is the wine. How this wine taste like that and all. Those flavor are real. Every food product is not one flavor molecule, apple is constitute of a hundred of flavor molecule, some in higher concentration than other and each apple and variety has it in different proportion, but they all have some that are higher than other. By tasting 100 variety of apple blindly, you will all be able to tell that it's an apple.

As for another example, strawberry and pineapple are very very similar and taste. By tasting them blindly, it's hard to differentiate them (if you only take the juice as the texture is also a good way to identify something).

And the major flavor compounds in a strawberry are: Furan-ol (caramel in taste also found in ripe ananas), eugenol (90% of clove aromas), Fruity esters, pentenal (vegetal) and cinnamate d'éthyle which is an ester found in cinnamon. And there's more and more but those are some of the dominant ones.
It's why strawberry and cinnamon is such a good mix, or strawberry, apple and pineapple juice. They all contain some dominant flavor molecule that creates chains and become greater than the sum of it's part.

Coffee is no different, but you need to practice your palate, to build flavor memories in order to find those molecules. The guy who eats 10 apple a week will probably be easily able to identify apple in his coffee. And there will always be some flavor that you forgot to pay enough attention and by redrinking the coffee again and again you finally realise that it was there, all the time, but you were putting all your effort in trying to taste that violet taste.
By saying that it taste like oreo cookie could be a funny way to say that there's milk/cream flavor, cocoa and a candy sugar sweetness.

And sometime you can be wrong, thinking that this tropical fruit was in fact stone fruit and it's were the group tasting become so interesting, building your palate and flavor.

Sorry for the long post..!