ABSTRACT
The emergence of Rwanda’s specialty coffee sector during the early twenty-first century has brought high-end Rwandan coffee to the shelves of coffee retailers across the United States, Europe, and Japan. While a variety of factors have influenced the rapid development of Rwanda’s specialty coffee industry, one of the most significant has been the training of domestic coffee tasters. Known as cuppers, these taste professionals act as a unique link in this global foodway and help enable perception of locally based flavors through marketplace mechanisms. The Rwandan cupper is not simply another middleman in a very long commodity chain. Rather, she or he plays a new role in transforming a generic cash-crop commodity into locality-based luxury item. This new role highlights the language and standards used to differentiate coffees in producing countries for international niche markets.
