You will listen an interview to a coffee-taster talking about a typical coffee-tasting session (Part 1) and the basic kinds of coffee (Part 2).

The professional coffee-taster who is being interviewed uses a wide range of words to describe taste, so pay attention to them. Click the speaker and listen carefully to the first part of his talk while you check the audio transcription.

COFFEE-TASTER:

Erm the coffees - we have about seventy cups set out here on a circular table er and the circular table will turn so that I can sit on a stool here in front of the spittoon and er the, the coffees will turn slowly and we can taste one at a time and I can split in -spit into the spittoon.

INTERVIEWER:

You don't swallow the coffee when you're tasting it?

COFFEE-TASTER:

We don't swallow the coffee because we'd soon fill up er ... we, if we're tasting all day. So there are seventy cups on this table and on the table behind me there can be another seventy cups and so we would soon fill up. So that is why we spit.

INTERVIEWER:

Do you know what you're tasting?

COFFEE-TASTER:

Er we, we know what broad type of coffee it is. We don't know from what country it comes from and we don't know who the supplier is, we don't want to be influenced by things like that. Erm, we just know the category of, the general category of coffee, and we ha - in the middle of the table, the circular table, we have a standard, er three bowls of coffee that come from the same bag every time, so that we always has a, have a benchmark er for take - comparing the coffees.

INTERVIEWER:

What, what has decided what these three cups are, that you - your standard?

COFFEE-TASTER:

That standard we, we, we select very carefully. Erm we choose it very carefully because that represents the company's standard for the next six months, and so we select it extremely carefully.

INTERVIEWER:

Are you trying to find coffees that taste the same or as near as possible, is that the idea?

COFFEE-TASTER:

Coffee - coffees are a natural product and they never taste quite the same, er, s - but they need come quite close to it, we use that really as a guide er and then we have er, er, we have four different categories into which we place the coffee according to what we find. When we taste we use a spoon and we put the spoon into the coffee like this and then suck it and spit it out erm, the idea being that you create a sort of rainstorm inside the mouth so that all the, the fine volatile aromatics reach the olfactory bulb behind the nose. It's not absolutely essential, you do have to do that when you're tasting coffee but it whe - if we have a difficult decision to make it just makes it a little easier to really register what, what is there.

INTERVIEWER:

What do you mean by 'creating a rainstorm'?

COFFEE-TASTER:

Well, we draw air in across the top of the coffee, the spoonful of coffee, so that you get little i droplets flying about inside the mouth ... I'll I'll do it again so that, so that, you can you can hear and see what, what I'm doing.