Culture Shapes the Way We Taste Coffee
A cupping session in Rwanda revealed how culture and memory rewrite our coffee experiences. I walked into Kivu Noir’s tasting table in Kigali with four hours of sleep and a headache, determined to savor the caffeine ahead. By the end, I wasn’t just buzzing from the beans—I was rethinking how taste itself is built on stories, smells, and shared rituals. The session began with a sensory game: matching scents to names. Butter? Roasted coffee? I stumbled, realizing my brain had no frame of reference for these. The answer? Culture. The butter I recognized was Ethiopian, spiced and familiar. The coffee…