👃📚☕ Le Nez du Café — 60 Aromas (2025 Edition, CQI updated)
Train your nose, upgrade your palate, and finally put words to what you taste.
Le Nez du Café 60 Aromas is the modern benchmark sensory kit for specialty coffee—used by professionals worldwide since 1996 and fully updated in 2025 in partnership with the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI). It’s designed to build a shared vocabulary for coffee aroma, improve consistency in cupping, and sharpen your olfactory memory—solo or in groups.
This is not a “fun gimmick.” It’s a serious training tool that makes you taste (and describe) coffee better, faster.
What’s included
🧪 60 high-quality aroma vials
Realistic, long-lasting aromas in three compact transport boxes.
🗂️ 60 fact sheets
Each aroma includes a large-format sheet linking the scent to:
-
olfactory aspects
-
chemical composition
-
how it appears in coffees around the world
📖 Illustrated book (96 pages)
Explains why aroma matters in coffee quality assessment, updated with modern knowledge on:
-
coffee genetics
-
post-harvest processing
-
roasting impact
🎯 Instruction leaflet with exercises & games
Practical drills you can do alone or with friends/colleagues to train recognition and recall.
The 9 aromatic families (60 aromas)
Floral / Fruity: honey, black tea, rose, jasmine, raspberry, blueberry, blackcurrant, strawberry, raisin, prune, cherry, pineapple, mango, melon, banana, apple, peach, orange, lemon, lime
Sour/Fermented / Green/Vegetative / Other: butyric acid, winey, coffee pulp, pea pod, fresh grass, cucumber, green (bell) pepper, hay-like, thyme, pine, cedar, potato, cardboard, woody, mouldy/damp, musty/earthy, leather, medicinal, tar
Roasted / Spices / Nutty-Cocoa / Sweet: rubber, tobacco, smoky, butter, toast, malt, pepper, star anise, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, peanut, hazelnut, almond, walnut, dark chocolate, chocolate, brown sugar, maple syrup, caramelised, vanilla
👃 Why we recommend it at WB.coffee
At WB.coffee / Amsterdam Coffee Lab we’re obsessed with one thing: turning “I like it” into “I understand it.”
Le Nez du Café helps you:
-
build a stronger sensory memory (so tasting notes become consistent, not random)
-
improve cupping confidence—especially when coffees are subtle
-
communicate better with customers, teammates, and suppliers
-
level up your brewing and roasting decisions because aroma becomes clearer
It’s one of the fastest ways to become a better taster—whether you’re a home coffee lover or a working barista.
How to use it (simple routine)
CoffeeNose tip 👃: Keep it short and repeatable.
-
Pick 3 aromas per session
-
Smell each for 5–10 seconds
-
Say the descriptor out loud (anchor it)
-
Compare in a coffee (cupping or brew)
-
Repeat 2–3x per week
Consistency beats intensity.
Perfect to combine with
☕ WB.coffee coffees (to practice “in the cup”)
🎓 Workshops & tastings at Amsterdam Coffee Lab (Weesp)
Bring your nose and we’ll put it to work:
-
sensory-focused cuppings
-
Coffee Omakase tasting experiences
-
SCA & CQI Sensory Skills professional courses
Le nez du cafe is the kit used for training and exams of CQI Q-graders and is often used in SCA Coffee Skills Program training and exams. This kit comes recommended by the CoffeeNose as the most universal reference kit: Trained coffee proffesionals from Korea, Japan, Burundi, Kenya, Norway, Portugal, Ukraine, Costa Rica and Brazil will all know the butter from le nez. Le nez is still the most widely used kit and a global reference.
At WB.coffee we always keep a limited amount of kits in stock to guarantee freshness (you don't want to buy a kit that has been sitting in a warehouse for a year just to "save" 10 euro").
Storage conditions
An aroma kit can be kept for up to ten years if stored in good conditions:
- the vials should be stored upright
- the kit should be kept away from sources of light and heat (e.g. radiators or sunlight)
This product is available on order when showing "out of stock" here. Don't get dissapointed and contact us for a backorder.
