Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/491371
46 STiR tea & coffee industry international T By Jenny Neill ools for sensory evaluation of coffee have evolved rapidly since the second half of the 20th century. Some contemporary tactics for defining coffee qual- ity date back to the 1920s. Grades, as most of these classifications are known, focused primarily on identifying defects until well after World War II. Some buyers, mostly those operating within the commodity market, still accept coffee "on descrip- tion" when purchasing commercial grade. In the second half of the 20th century, many producers concerned themselves with finding new ways to differentiate quality based on positive attributes. This led to a proliferation of classifications as well as significant changes to coffee contracts and standard processes for accepting green beans upon delivery. Advances in food science during this period meant the development of instant coffee and soluble products was changing rapidly too. A bit of coffee cupping history By the 1960s, the global market had been through major ups and downs due to changes in public perception of the safety of drinking coffee. Also, a rapid expansion of pro- duction resulting from Brazilian shortfalls due to the 1953 frost impacted commodity prices worldwide. Coffee boards at the country or regional level formed in order to put export control mechanisms into place that would guarantee premiums based on a green coffee meeting higher, albeit not universal, grading standards. The creation of such standards was the beginning of establishing the specialty cate- gory for coffee. With each agency or organization setting its own classification systems, these moves resulted in introducing even more complexity into an already complicated market. A new era in how the quality of coffee would be judged began with the publica- tion of Ted Lingle's book Coffee Cuppers' Handbook in 1985. Mario Fernandez, presently a graduate student nearing the completion of a doctor- ate in food science at the University of Otago, New Zealand, started cupping shortly af- Will new lexicons help bridge industry communication gaps? Descriptive Analysis Tools for Coffee Alexis Rodriguez, green coffee quality and development manager, Nestlé Nespresso