The SCAA scoresheet, approved by its technical standards committee in 2003 and published in 2004 with the protocol, scores ten attributes on a scale of 6 to 10 in quarter-point steps: fragrance/aroma, flavor, aftertaste, acidity, body, balance, uniformity, clean cup, sweetness and overall impression. The three attributes of uniformity, clean cup and sweetness are scored by bowl, 2 points per clean bowl out of five.

Defects are deducted at the end of the calculation: a taint (taint, perceptible on the nose) is worth 2 points per bowl affected, a fault (fault, perceptible in the mouth) 4 points per bowl. The final score classifies: 90 and above, outstanding; 85 to 89.99, excellent; 80 to 84.99, very good; below 80, the coffee is not “specialty.” This threshold of 80 has become, in twenty years, the operational definition of the word specialty, without any physical property distinguishing it from 79.75.

SCAA, Cupping Form (2004); Daily Coffee News, September 10, 2019, The Complexity of Cupping; Royal Coffee, Scoring Specialty Coffee (commercial page)

The professional training form cited above is an adaptation of it, reduced from ten criteria to nine. Here they are: odors, aromas, matter, brightness, sweetness, persistence, harmony, purity, uniformity. Purity is the absence of defects. Uniformity is consistency from one bowl to another, over three bowls.

They do not all weigh the same. Only odors and aromas receive a coefficient of 1.5, which amounts to making the nose decide one and a half times more than the mouth.

Above all, the form lays down a postulate that the SCAA scoresheet does not: a coffee is judged within its geographic perimeter. The brightness of a Brazil is evaluated on the scale of Brazils, not on that of Kenyas. A low-acid origin therefore stops being penalized for what it never had.

Its tiers follow.

• Over 90unique.
• 85 to 90excellent.
• 80 to 84.75very good.
• 75 to 79.75good.
• 65 to 74.75commercial.
• 50 to 64.75inferior.

The difference from the SCAA shows at the bottom of the table. Where the 2004 scoresheet stops at “not specialty,” this one goes on naming what it has in the bowl.

professional training document, tasting guide, p. 3 and 7

What a point is worth can be read at auctions. The 2026 review opens with this figure. In specialty coffee, one more point on the sensory score corresponds to a 54.6% higher price at auction. Buyers who fight over a quarter point therefore have their reasons.

Yet one still has to know what the figure covers. The observation concerns specialty auctions, that is, minuscule volumes on a world scale. It also concerns a zone of high scores, the one where competition between buyers is fiercest. It says nothing about the ordinary market.

The institution that created this market is the Cup of Excellence. It was founded in 1999 by George Howell, Susie Spindler and Silvio Leite. It came out of a “Gourmet Coffee” project of the International Coffee Organization and the International Trade Centre. The juries score on the SCA form there, after a national preselection.

The gap between the first sale and the latest ones tells how far it has come. The first auction, in Brazil, paid 2.60 dollars a pound for a lot of 50 bags from the Alterosa farm, at a time when Brazil was selling at a discount. A Sidama lot has since reached 400.50 dollars a pound at an Ethiopian auction.

Yang et al. 2026, p. 2; Global Coffee Report, 25 years of Cup of Excellence (2024); George Howell Coffee, biography (commercial page); LC ch. 17