Milan Gold

We’re holding our nose directly over the cup, taking in three sharp sniffs to allow blasts of the powder’s aroma to really register.

‘What flavours can you detect from this sample?’ asks Sherri Johns, coffee expert and instructor of this coffee appreciation class. We’re stumped.

As the others enthuse about honey notes and caramel textures, we can’t help but feel that it just smells like, well, coffee.

But this kind of one-dimensional view is something that Milan Gold, the company offering the course, are hoping to correct amongst Chinese coffee drinkers.

The course can be compared to a wine tasting session, with the same criteria for judging wine being used.

The course’s mainpurpose is to inform coffee drinkers about the subtleties and varieties of beans, the ideal way to operate coffee machines and what to look for when you’re choosing a coffee.

Despite being asked to use lofty language to describe the six varieties of coffee, the course is informal and there’s nothing to scare off the beginner. Simon Fowler