Cups were lined up at the tasting table, awaiting the coffee that would soon fill them. A coffee tasting, called a cupping, was about to begin at Carolines Coffee Roasters at 128 South Auburn Street in Grass Valley.

Carolines has been roasting and selling coffee since the mid-80s. Trace Fike, a founding partner with his parents — the company is named after his mother — realized that there was a need for specialty coffees roasted to order, and a booming business was born.

Fike has found a great deal of success in both his wholesale coffee business and his coffee houses. They sell to around one hundred restaurants and deal with a dozen grocery stores.

Up to 70 percent of Fike’s coffee is organic, and he roasts twenty varietals as well as quite a few blends. He explained that he roasts his varietals light in order to showcase their complex flavors and focuses on darker roasts for the blends.

Fike had chosen three coffees for the cupping, a Tanzania peaberry, a Mexican Nayarita, and a Sumatran Pawani.

Coffees tend to have an origin name, like Sumatra, followed by an identifier of what specific coffee it is, like the family estate name of Pawani, but that isn’t the case for all coffees.

Take for example, the descriptor of peaberry. A peaberry happens when a seed, instead of making two flat beans, grows as one bean inside the coffee cherry. Many people feel that peaberries have a more concentrated flavor since it doesn’t split into two.

Just like with wine tastings, coffee cuppings have their own specific protocols. All the offerings were light roasts, ground to a coarseness between what is done for a press and what is done for brewed coffee. Each was measured into its own cup. At this point, the taster can shake the grounds and inhale the fragrance. These aromas can be compared to what wafts up after the water is added.

Just off of boiling, about 202 degrees, the water is poured onto the grounds. The coffee rises to the top, forming a gorgeous, dark brown crust. The taster bends over, sticks her nose into the cup, and inhales. Then with her spoon, she breaks the crust and pushes it toward the back of the cup as she experiences the most intense of the smells in the coffee.

Taking a sampling of the liquid, the taster then slurps — the louder the better — in order to spray the palate. As the coffee cools, she continues to taste in order to experience the evolution of flavors.

First up in the cupping was the Tanzanian. The aroma held a hint of chocolate followed by lemon. The chocolate hint continued on the palate with very bright citrus and a sharp, though pleasant, finish.

The Nayarita had a very bright, fruity nose. It was full-bodied with a nutty flavor and an acidic finish. As it cooled, it developed a softer mouth feel.

The Sumatran was a lovely, complex coffee. It began with a nose of black walnut followed by tropical fruit. There was mango on the palate followed by ripe banana and a tease of nuttiness on the finish. It had a velvety mouth feel, and as it sat, chocolate notes developed.

One of Fike’s favorite things is experiencing how the flavors develop as the coffee cools to room temperature. He wasn’t disappointed by any of the samples, but the Sumatran was the front-runner. Fike described the Pawani as, “Beautifully balanced with nice, bright acidity.” He enjoyed the way it lingered on the palate and the luxurious mouth feel.

As the cupping came to a close, a customer walked up to the tasting table to find out what had been going on. After it was explained, the customer talked about how cool it was that there was such a specific way to rate coffee. Seemingly impressed, he left to join his friends to tell them what all that slurping was about.

Mellisa Hannum has a degree in journalism from Humboldt State University. She paid her way through school by being a barista. She misses slinging espresso and thinks that the amazingly nuanced aroma of roasting coffee beans is what Heaven must smell like.