The short version. In the autumn of 2024 the Specialty Coffee Association formally retired the 2004 cupping form, the one that defined “specialty” as any coffee scoring 80 points or more out of 100. Its replacement, the Coffee Value Assessment, splits what the old form mashed together: what a coffee tastes like, how much a particular taster likes it, what its physical grade is, and what is known about where it came from. A single number no longer carries the meaning it did. That matters to us because our own website said “86+ cupping grade only” and printed SCA scores on the product cards. We have taken them down, and this is why.
The Specialty Coffee Association published a short notice on its website, reported by Daily Coffee News on 5 November 2024. Three new standards, numbered SCA-102, 103 and 104, had been adopted as its official cupping standards. The notice said, in plain language, that they superseded the 2004 Cupping Protocol and Form. The four forms went out in seven languages in October 2025.
That form was twenty years old. For most of that time it was the closest thing coffee had to a constitution.
Where the number came from
The 100-point scale was borrowed. Wine had used it since Robert Parker popularised it in the late 1970s, and cigars had followed. In 1997 Kenneth Davids launched Coffee Review, the first publication to rate coffees on 100 points, and has written since that the industry took some flak for it at the time, but not much.
The trade's own version arrived in 2004. The Specialty Coffee Association of America, as it then was, released a cupping form built around the work of Ted Lingle, whose Coffee Cupper's Handbook had appeared in 1985. The form scored ten attributes, fragrance, flavour, aftertaste, acidity, body, balance, uniformity, clean cup, sweetness and overall, and summed them. Under 70 was defective. Seventy to just under 80 was commodity. And 80 or above was specialty.
That last line is the one that mattered. An entire segment of the industry, from farm-gate contracts to the word on your café's chalkboard, came to rest on whether a panel of trained tasters put a coffee above or below 80.
The tasters were trained and licensed by the Coffee Quality Institute as Q Graders, calibrated against each other over six days and about fifteen exams, so that, in theory, an 84 in Nairobi meant the same as an 84 in Portland. On 24 April 2025 the two bodies announced that the SCA would license the Q programme from CQI for ten years at $250,000 a year. From 1 October 2025 the SCA has run an evolved Q built on the Coffee Value Assessment, and CQI is out of the operation. So the association took over the qualification about six months after retiring the form the qualification was built on, and then rebuilt the qualification around the replacement.
What was wrong with it
Nothing was wrong with cupping. Blind, systematic tasting is the best tool the trade has, and the new system still rests on it.
What was wrong was the single number. Davids himself, the man who brought the scale to coffee, wrote an essay in 2010 called “The 100-point Coffee Rating Paradox,” arguing that the ratings work only if the expert consensus behind them is treated as a living argument rather than a fixed truth. In practice the trade treated it as fixed. A cupper's description of a coffee and a cupper's preference for it were folded into one figure, and the figure was written into contracts.
The form also carried a taste. It was built in a culture that prized brightness, so a coffee with pronounced acidity tended to score higher than a coffee with the same care and less acid. A rounded, chocolate-forward, mild-acidity cup, which is what Zambia grows, could be flawless and still lose a point to a Kenyan on the acidity line. Buyers who wanted the Zambian for exactly what it was found themselves arguing with a form that had been designed for something else.
And the number leaked. It was meant for buyers. It ended up on bags, on websites and in menus, where a consumer with no calibration was asked to believe that 86 was meaningfully better than 84, when two calibrated tasters could produce that difference from the same cup on the same morning.
What replaces it
The Coffee Value Assessment is four assessments rather than one score, and the SCA insists they be done separately.
The physical assessment grades the green: screen size, moisture, defects, colour. It is the 2004 green-grading system carried over, and it is where a grade like Zambia's AAA lives.
The descriptive assessment records what the coffee tastes like, using a standard vocabulary and intensity scales, and makes no judgement about whether that is good.
The affective assessment records how much the taster likes it, and here a number does survive. Eight sections, each rated zero to nine, and a published equation in SCA-104 that turns the sum into a familiar-looking figure: multiply by 0.65625, add 52.75, subtract for non-uniform and defective cups, round to the nearest quarter point. All nines gives 100. All fives gives 79. The SCA publishes a calculator for it. The difference is that the number is now explicitly a preference, which may be the taster's own or their market's. An Italian espresso blender and a Nordic light-roast buyer can score the same coffee differently and both be right.
The extrinsic assessment records everything outside the cup that adds value: origin, traceability, process, certification, the name of the farm.
The SCA's own guidance says the system does not set a price. Only the market does that. What it does is stop a single number from pretending to.
What this means for a bag
Scores on retail bags are now legacy language. Some roasters will keep printing them for a while, the way some still say “third wave,” and there is nothing dishonest about a score that was earned on the old form. But it will mean less each year, and the trade press has been documenting a backlash against tasting notes that do not show up in the cup. Our read is that the same argument reaches scores next.
What to read instead is, conveniently, what the new system puts first. The origin, down to the farm. The process: washed, natural, honey, anaerobic. The grade: AAA or AA for Zambia, which is a screen size, not a taste. The variety. The harvest window and the roast date. Those are facts. A score was an opinion wearing a number.
Our own confession
Until September 2026, imvelobrands.com described our coffee as “direct trade, 86+ cupping grade only,” and the product cards under every journal article carried SCA scores to one decimal place. Those numbers came from cupping on the 2004 form, and we printed them because every specialty roaster did.
We have removed them. The 86+ line is gone. The decimal scores are gone. In their place each product page carries the origin, the altitude, the variety, the process, the grade and the harvest window, and one set of tasting notes we can stand behind in the cup: milk chocolate, caramel and orange, on a rounded body. If a lot is cupped under the new descriptive standard we may publish the descriptive profile, which is a list of what is there, not a mark out of a hundred.
The words “direct trade” went too. It is not a defined term, nobody audits it, and we would have to explain our purchasing relationship in more detail than we currently publish before the phrase would mean anything. Easier to describe what we actually do, which is buy from smallholder farmers and roast in Lusaka.
It makes the site look less like everyone else's. That is the point.
The origin, the process, the grade, the date. No score.
Shop the Zambian single origin
More from this series: why we joined the Specialty Coffee Association and the varieties on the plateau.
Frequently asked questions
What is a coffee cupping score? Under the SCA's 2004 form, a total out of 100 across ten sensory attributes, assigned by trained tasters. Eighty or above defined “specialty” coffee. The SCA superseded that form in late 2024.
What is the Coffee Value Assessment? The SCA's replacement system, adopted as its official cupping standard in late 2024, with the forms released in seven languages in October 2025. It separates physical grading, descriptive tasting, affective (preference) rating and extrinsic factors such as origin and traceability, rather than producing one score.
Does an 86-point coffee taste better than an 84? Not reliably. The two-point difference is within the range that calibrated tasters produce from the same cup, and the old form rewarded acidity, so gentler coffees scored lower for reasons unrelated to quality.
What does AAA mean on Zambian coffee? A green-coffee grade based on bean size, following the Kenyan-derived screen system Zambia adopted. It describes the physical lot, not the flavour.
Sources
Specialty Coffee Association, “The SCA Officially Adopts CVA Descriptive and Affective Assessments as New Cupping Standards,” and the SCA Coffee Value Assessment overview page; reported by Daily Coffee News, “SCA Officially Adopts New Cupping Forms and Standards,” 5 November 2024. SCA Standard 104-2024, Coffee Value Assessment: Affective Assessment (the zero-to-nine sections and the score equation), and the SCA's CVA affective score calculator. Royal Coffee, “Scoring Specialty Coffee: What Do The Numbers Mean?”, April 2026 (2004 form structure, Q Grader training). Specialty Coffee Association and Coffee Quality Institute joint announcement, 24 April 2025, and Daily Coffee News, “The Specialty Coffee Association is Taking Over the Q Grader Program,” 25 April 2025, and “SCA Officially Launches Q Grader Courses Tied to the CVA,” 1 October 2025. Kenneth Davids, “The 100-point Coffee Rating Paradox,” Coffee Review, first published in Roast Magazine, 2010; Coffee Review, “25 Years of Change at Coffee Review,” January 2023. Perfect Daily Grind, “Will the new SCA cupping form & protocol add more value for specialty coffee?”, April 2023. Sprudge, “Coffee Value Assessment: Exploring the SCA's New Tool,” June 2023. MTPak Coffee, “Coffee Value Assessment: Understanding the new SCA protocol,” September 2023.