Originally Published in Issue 53, Oct-Dec 2025
Timing is important, but community is everything.
Words by Retha van Rhijn
Every year the Specialty Coffee Association of South Africa send National Champions to compete on the global stage. Retha van Rhijn is a two time Cup Tasters Champion and she has some insights to share about her experiences and how you can get deeper flavour insight into your daily cup of coffee.
Just like the Rolex watches displayed in Geneva’s airport, time marches on, the hands moving swiftly since I returned from Switzerland and the World Cup Tasters stage. It’s already been three whole months, but it almost feels like it happened over a year ago. It was a truly incredible journey. Testing, most of the time; yet, so rewarding.
After winning the SCASA National Cup Tasters title at the beginning of June 2025, there was no time to pause. The planning and bookings began immediately. You can read more about all that chaos in the article by my partner in crime, Shannon Black soon (and please do, you’re in for a treat). Amidst all the planning and continued work responsibilities, training also needed to find its place in the few hours of the day. Early mornings, late evenings, and weekends. That’s how it goes before a World Championship bid. There’s something about that mentality, having to knuckle-down and make a plan, that will always be special to me.
My biggest realisation during this time was that I really couldn’t have done this alone. Whether it was SCASA jumping in when the pawpaw hit the fan with our visas, the amazing team from Plato, my family, or my dear friend Shan who fought with me every step of the way, the fact that we need community was evident. All the more if we want to take that gold one day. Trust me, I truly believe that South Africa’s time is coming!
How did it all start for me? Well, serving coffee at my church’s coffee shop was where it all began. Just the joy of making, what I thought, was good coffee. Fast forward through five years of working at markets during high school and university, and then Covid hit. That gave me a lot of time to think, and I realised that I would love to do a course and finally get a certificate to prove I can actually make coffee.
That decision and the SCA Barista Foundation Course that followed, made me realise that I actually knew very little about coffee. So I started working harder, learned how to use scales, and what a flavour note actually is. It wasn’t until I did the next level of training (SCA Barista Intermediate) that I really started falling in love with tasting and exploring the different taste profiles of coffee. It was during this training that I had the most tangible and vivid experience of the differences in processing, origins, and body in coffee.
Not long after this, the first barista competition after covid was announced. I’ve always been competitive, and the opportunity to combine coffee and competition sounded great. However, I didn’t know how to approach it. Where did I even start?
This is where having a trainer or mentor played such an important role. For me it was Stevo Kühn, who was my boss at the time and the person I did my training through, it didn’t hurt that he was also a competitive barista. In fact, at the time of going to print he is prepping to go to Milan to represent South Africa at the World Barista Championships, go Stevo! A tiny nudge in the right direction and a vote of confidence from him was all I needed to take the plunge. Sometimes we overthink the obvious and need a voice of reason to bring clarity to all the thoughts. With that gentle nudge, I realised I could enter the competition circle with just a spoon and some training. And that’s how my first competition cycle started. Six months later, I was crowned the 2023 SA Cup Tasters Champion. Definitely a wild ride!
That’s how simple it is to start. I know my story isn’t the typical one, and very few people actually win on their first entry into a competition, but the truth is, you’ll never know unless you take that first step. Just start. Dare to try something new, or something you’re passionate about, there’s always a way.
Now, I had some formal training when I started, and cupping bowls weren’t a foreign concept to me, you might be asking: how do I learn to taste coffee, or taste better overall, if I don’t even have the equipment?
Well, excellent question.
The great thing about tasting is that you don’t need specific coffee or specific equipment to get better at it. Most people think they’re really bad at identifying flavours, but the biggest reason we struggle with tasting is because we’re not used to focusing while we taste. Eating usually happens while we’re busy with something else — running from one errand to the next, or just having a good time with friends. But we seldom sit down and actually focus on what we’re tasting. And that’s the most important part. The truth is, I can train as long as I want, but if I don’t focus and pay attention during that time, it becomes really hard to pick up the differences in taste. And this is the biggest challenge during competition: focus.
Finding focus at a World Championship is a skill that requires training. You’re in a new space, with hundreds of people watching, thousands online, and cameras all around. And you have to step onto the biggest stage in the world and be calm, confident, and focused. That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned this year: every detail matters leading up to competition. What you eat, where you stay, and even transport has an effect on your mind. And ultimately, your mind has to be healthy, because that’s the strongest connection between your tongue and how quickly you make your move on the cupping table.
I had the privilege of talking to Franki Shi, multiple-time Australian Cup Tasting Champ, and he said competition is 50% tasting and 50% your mind. So to be great tasters, we need to be focused people. Present people. Freda Yuan, multiple-time UK Cup Tasting Champ, has written an excellent book on this, where she practises what she calls “mindfulness” in her book Sip and Slurp.
With that being said, it really is simple to get better at tasting. Simple, not easy. Like anything, it takes dedication and time to improve. One of my favourite things to do is when I see a new variety of fruit; be it a red kiwi or Florida Pearl strawberries, and then taste it against the variety I’m used to. In this way, I build a new flavour memory, but it also allows me to spot the differences between the two varieties. Fruit is just one example, but you can take anything and try to find the differences in them. I mean, you can use anything!
An important thing to remember is that 30% of our flavour experience comes through gustation (taste). Our tongue picks up the basic tastes: acidity, bitterness, sweetness, saltiness, and umami. The other 70% of flavour is picked up through the olfactory receptors in our nasal and retronasal cavities.
So here’s my biggest tip: First identify the basic taste by keeping your nose closed. Next: Open your nose and try to identify the flavours that come through and also what they remind you of. My take? Tasting is the best memory game ever.
Then get a friend to do it with you. If you can taste with a friend or colleague, you not only learn how you taste, but you also pick up on different flavours and sensations that might be more prominent to the other person. The thing with tasting is that the options are endless, get creative and explore it.
You might not have cupping bowls, grinders, and spoons where you’re tasting. But, you might have four of the same mugs and some soup spoons, and you can ask a coffee shop to grind the beans you want to cup. Always remembering that cupping is a great tool to learn, but you don’t have to cup to taste well, you can train your palate at any meal or with any beverage.
Another option is to find a local café that does cuppings and join public sessions whenever you can, there are more and more popping up all the time. Because the industry wants you to experience what they do in each cup, coffee can be so much more than caffeine. Find a coffee community and ask. That’s the amazing thing about this industry, if you have the courage to ask, someone will definitely help.
We really can’t do it alone. The journey is so much more fun when we do it together. But more than that, we need people who’ve been to the places we still want to go. So, for me, that ultimately means getting a coach for my next cycle. I’ve done one year with and one year without a coach, and I now understand why people climb Mount Everest with a Sherpa who knows the way. Get yourself a coffee Sherpa, and climb that mountain. I’ll see you at the top. Let’s go!
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