We Created The Ethiopian Coffee Flavor Wheel

This week, we launched the COFFEE FLAVOR WHEEL  in several languages, including Spanish, English, and two major languages spoken in Ethiopia: Amharic and Afan Oromo.

The idea for this project emerged from a simple search for a professional coffee flavor wheel in Amharic while we were designing the Black Jebena Coffee Roastery.

We wanted to display a coffee flavor wheel not simply as decoration, but as a tool for learning and conversation.

As we searched for coffee-flavor wheels in different languages, we found several translations. But we could not find a professional coffee flavor wheel in Amharic.

That led us to a simple question: If coffee's story began in Ethiopia, why shouldn't the language of specialty coffee's sensory evaluation also be accessible in one of Ethiopia's principal languages?

More Than a Translation

At first, we imagined this would be primarily a translation project: a way of adapting an established educational tool for Amharic speakers.

But as we explored coffee terminology, historical sources, and Ethiopian research, I realized the project was about more than translation.

It became a journey into Ethiopia's coffee history, research traditions, and sensory culture.

Modern institutional coffee research in Ethiopia began in the 1950s, and in 1967 the Jimma Agricultural Research Center (JARC) was established as part of Ethiopia's national agricultural research system.

Since then, Ethiopian researchers have spent decades studying coffee varieties, cultivation, quality, and sensory evaluation.

Yet despite this long research tradition, I found little publicly available material explaining how Ethiopian sensory knowledge relates to the documented development of the modern coffee flavor wheel.

This is not to suggest that Ethiopian expertise was deliberately excluded or overlooked.

It simply raised a question that stayed with me.

If Ethiopian coffees have helped shape many of the flavors celebrated throughout specialty coffee, and Ethiopia has its own long tradition of cultivating, studying, and evaluating coffee, what might the global coffee community still learn by engaging more deeply with Ethiopian knowledge, language, and sensory experience?

That question changed the way I understood the project.

What began as a search for an Amharic coffee flavor wheel became, for me, an opportunity to connect the language of specialty coffee with Ethiopia's own language, history, research, and lived experience.

Language, Memory, and Flavor

As I worked on the wheel, I found myself returning to the flavors, aromas, and memories that had shaped my childhood and everyday life in Ethiopia: Adey Abeba, whose arrival each year marked new beginnings; the sweetness of chewing fresh Shenkor Ageda; the honeyed warmth of T'ej; the fragrant spice of korarima; and Tiringo—a citrus fruit whose distinctive aroma and bittersweet character remain engraved in my memory, no matter where I've lived.

Working with these references reminded me that my earliest understanding of flavor was shaped long before I learned the formal language of sensory evaluation.

It began at home—with family, shared meals, familiar aromas, and the landscapes that surrounded me.

Language carries memory.

The first words we use to describe flavor are rarely learned in a classroom.

They come from the fruits we ate as children, the spices used in our kitchens, the flowers that appeared with the changing seasons, and the drinks shared during celebrations.

Those experiences also shape how we interpret flavor.

We understand new flavors through the ones we already know.

A fruit, flower, or aroma that immediately evokes a vivid memory in one culture may be unfamiliar—or carry an entirely different meaning—in another.

Beyond Translation

Translation is never simply the search for equivalent words.

It is also the search for equivalent experiences: making sensory language meaningful within the cultural and environmental context in which people encounter them.

When sensory education recognizes familiar experiences, it becomes more accessible.

Someone may not immediately connect with a descriptor drawn from a fruit or flower they have never encountered.

But when they recognize something from their own home, market, or landscape, the language of flavor begins to feel like something they can enter and contribute to.

Around the world, coffee professionals and educators increasingly adapt sensory language to reflect the fruits, flowers, spices, and cultural references familiar to their own communities.

This does not weaken a common language of coffee.

It enriches it by recognizing that people experience and describe flavor through different languages, memories, and environments.

Including Ethiopian references allows Ethiopia's own sensory landscape to stand alongside the broader language of specialty coffee.

A Living Coffee Culture

This project grows from the belief that has guided Black Jebena from the beginning: to honor the birthplace of coffee by celebrating Ethiopia as a living coffee culture.

Ethiopia is more than the place where coffee's story began.

It has its own languages, traditions, flavors, and ways of understanding coffee, as well as a long history of researching and evaluating it.

Its relationship with coffee is not confined to the past.

It continues through producers, researchers, coffee professionals, families, and communities today.

An Invitation

We warmly invite Ethiopian researchers, producers, coffee professionals, educators, and communities—as well as coffee communities around the world—to share their knowledge, perspectives, and suggestions.

Future editions should continue to grow, improve, and reflect the experiences of those who know Ethiopian coffee most deeply.

If the language of coffee is to reflect the richness of coffee itself, it should continue to grow with the people and places that have always shaped it.

A shared language does not become weaker as more voices join it. It becomes richer.

Work in Progress — Google Form for All Flavor Notes

Please click here to contribute to the first Ethiopian Flavor Wheel.

Your contribution and expertise are extremely valuable to us. Thank you for helping us develop this important resource.

Go ahead and try the COFFEE FLAVOR WHEEL!