Cupping is how coffee people taste coffee: a table of bowls, a spoon, and a whole lot of slurping. It's not precious — it's practice.

The slurp

Slurp hard to aerate the coffee across your whole palate. Name the first note that hits. That's your entry into the flavor wheel.

Compare, always

Never cup one coffee. Two side by side teach you more than ten solo. The difference is where the vocabulary comes from.