The Extraordinary Extrinsic | 25, Issue 20
If you’ve been following along with the SCA’s project to evolve the 2004 cupping system into a Coffee Value Assessment, there’s a good chance you’re already aware of the importance of extrinsic, or symbolic, attributes.
The specialty coffee industry has long understood that it’s not just “what’s in the cup” that matters when it comes to understanding, appreciating, or defining specialty coffee—even if we didn’t quite know how to articulate it. Everything around—or about—a coffee matters, too. In some ways, this issue continues our deep dive into all things extrinsic: packaging, flavor descriptors, imagery, and sustainability credentials. These topics are not only interesting, but likely to become even more integral to the coffee trade.
There’s an intriguing (and unplanned) duality in the features from Sarah Charles, Davide Del Prete, and Rocco Macchiavello: while Del Prete and Macchiavello look back at the sustainability efforts in the coffee sector to assess whether those efforts are having their intended impacts, Charles looks ahead as we begin shifting from voluntary sustainability standards to a regulatory approach. Her point that “decisions around how to address sustainability are inherently fraught with trade-offs,” is exemplified across Del Prete and Macchiavello’s findings.
A dialogue between Dr. Fabiana Carvalho, Bente Klein Hazebroek, and Dr. Ilja Croijmans has emerged in this issue, too. Both features explore different facets of how we present coffee to consumers—Dr. Carvalho focuses on the colors of coffee packaging, while Klein Hazebroek and Dr. Croijmans explore the words we use to describe a coffee’s sensory experience—and speak to the potential power of extrinsic attributes to garner additional value. They also raise unexpected questions about the impact of extrinsic attributes on our brains (albeit in different ways): How (and why) do our brains simulate imagined flavors when we read descriptors on a bag? What does it mean when consumers, regardless of preference, see one color as being more valuable than another?
And finally, in insight, Noa Berger almost seems to bring these threads together as she explores how related industries—like wine, coffee, cacao, and increasingly vanilla—inspire and impact each other. The synergy between these industries is most clearly reflected in the way their stories are told, for better or worse, particularly in how they leverage extrinsic attributes to garner even more value and promote advancements in agronomy, sustainability, and trade.
With all this new information coming to the fore as we continue our efforts to better understand how and where value is created (and captured and distributed) within the coffee system, there’s never been a better time for us to shine the program spotlight on SCA education and its curriculum development process. There, Chelsea Dubay shares more about a forthcoming update to the Sensory Skills courses in the Coffee Skills Program, which incorporates—among many things—the same recent advances in coffee and sensory science that underpin the addition of an extrinsic assessment in the Coffee Value Assessment.
JENN RUGOLO
Editor, 25
We hope you are as excited as we are about the release of 25, Issue 20. This issue of 25 is made possible with the contributions of specialty coffee businesses who support the activities of the Specialty Coffee Association through its underwriting and sponsorship programs. Learn more about our underwriters here.