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Why Your Coffee Tastes like Blueberries: How Region Affects Coffee Flavor Notes
Have you ever walked through the coffee aisle of your local grocery store and stopped to read about the coffee? You might've noticed that the bags had “flavor notes” of various berries, fruits, foods, chocolates, etc… At first glance, you might've been confused and thought the coffees were flavored, so you probably skipped over them and moved to something more… normal. Perhaps a normal coffee-pot-Esque coffee like Folgers or Dunkin’. What if I told you those coffees aren’t flavored, but instead those coffees are high-quality beans from certain regions of the world, and the flavor notes (similar to the subtle flavor notes of wine) are various subtle tastes that come out in the cup of brewed coffee, mostly dependant on how/where the coffee was grown and processed.
Different Region = Different Flavor Notes
Once again making the comparison to wine - you might like a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand and dislike its counterpart from California. They are the same type of product, but because of the region and where the grapes were grown and processed, the flavors you get out of them are of stark contrast. Coffee is the same way. You are having the same type of product — coffee beans, but from very different areas of the world.
In Latin America, you most often will get flavor notes that have chocolate, nutty, and caramel notes. In African regions, you will get fruity, floral, and sweet notes. In Asia, you will get earthy flavors that contain more herbal and dark chocolate hints.
These regions benefit from microclimates of volcanic soil around the 1200m elevation range of the world — the tropics. The microclimates along these regions extend to what is sometimes called the “coffee belt” — the space 30 degrees north and south of the equator. The coffee belt is ideal for growing coffee, as it has moderate rainfall, year-round sunshine, and averaging yearly temperatures of around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. All these factors come together to enhance the flavor and acidity of coffee beans by prolonging the development time, and the differences in elevation/environment across the world effect which subtle flavors come out in the finished product.
Even though it is a bummer that we can’t buy locally grown coffee, it most likely would not be very tasty if you were to grow coffee plants in your backyard anyway. So next time you walk through the grocery store, give a second thought to those coffees from all over the world. They aren’t flavored with additives, they are just special because of how and where they were grown. You might even find your new favorite morning brew!