Families, attributes, and sub-attributes
How the AreaCacao sensory catalog is organized and how to create your own attributes.
How the catalog is organized
The AreaCacao attribute catalog is organized along three axes you'll see in the filters and in the tree:
By level
- System — attributes curated by AreaCacao, read-only.
- Extended catalog — additional curated attributes flagged by region (for example, LATAM vocabulary).
- Custom — the ones you create for your workshop.
By category
Every row in the tree falls under one of these four categories:
- Base
- Complementary (the aromatics)
- Defect
- Mouthfeel / Texture
By family
The aromatic families live under the Complementary category. There are 11 canonical families:
Fresh fruit · Ripe and dried fruit · Nuts · Floral · Herbal and vegetal · Woody and earthy · Caramel and sugars · Spices · Dairy · Roasted · Fermentation.
Down to the sub-attribute
Within an attribute there can be sub-attributes (one level of nesting). This is the finest level of detail: you can nest a sub-attribute inside any attribute of the same category (Base, Complementary, Defect, or Mouthfeel / Texture; for Complementary, also of the same family), not just aromatic families. A typical case is regional vocabulary under a standard family, but it isn't the only one.
How many attributes there are
The curated catalog adds up to 93 attributes:
| Block | Count |
|---|---|
| System | 85 |
| Extended catalog (LATAM) | 8 |
| Total | 93 |
The 85 System attributes break down like this:
| Category | Attributes |
|---|---|
| Base | 7 |
| Complementary (aromatics across 11 families) | 43 |
| Defect | 22 |
| Mouthfeel / Texture | 13 |
The number 11 is the count of aromatic families, not of attributes. The 43 complementary attributes are spread across those 11 families.
Why this structure
- Easy to read. A tasting report shows the categories and families first (the overview) and lets you drill down to the attribute and sub-attribute.
- Controlled vocabulary. Every panelist uses the same terms, regardless of their experience.
- Comparability. Different tastings with different products can be compared at the category, family, or attribute level.
Customization
You can't edit the System and Extended catalog attributes: they're read-only. What you can do is create custom attributes for your workshop — private and visible only in your tastings and sheets.
When you create a custom attribute you define:
- Name (required).
- Category (Base, Complementary, Defect, or Mouthfeel / Texture). It can't be changed once created.
- Family (required only if the category is Complementary).
- Parent attribute (optional): to create a sub-attribute under an existing one of the same category (and, for Complementary, the same family) that isn't itself a sub-attribute. The selector appears when there are compatible attributes, whatever the category. Useful, among other cases, for regional vocabulary under standard families.
- Applicability (required): which product types it applies to. Select at least one product type; if you leave it empty, saving is blocked with a validation error. (The "empty = applies to all" rule only holds for the curated System attributes, not for the ones you create.)
- Short description (optional, up to 500 characters): appears below the name on the sheet.
- Operational definition (optional, up to 1000 characters): the training note shown as a tooltip on the attribute's row.
- Region (optional): Latin America, Europe, Asia, or Africa.
The Name must be between 2 and 60 characters.
Applicability is chosen by selecting product types as chips. There are 27: cocoa beans, mass, and liquor; dark, milk, and white chocolate; firm and soft ganache; crunchy pralines, liquid praline, and gianduja; soft, hard, and salted caramel; fondant; pâte de fruit and fruit cream; marshmallow and chocolate mousse; pastry cream and buttercream; marzipan and egg-yolk-and-almond paste; truffle; compound bonbon, bar with inclusions, and dragée. Each chip shows the type's internal identifier, which is in Spanish in every interface language (for example chocolate negro, pate de frutas, or trufa rolled).
You can edit and delete your custom attributes. When you delete one, the tastings that already used it keep the name. The deletion can be undone by writing to support.