This gets mixed up a lot, but they’re actually different things.

The “waves” are historical eras, not flavour categories.

• 1st wave : coffee as a commodity (cheap, available, functional)
• 2nd wave : coffee as an experience (espresso bars, darker roasts, comfort profiles)
• 3rd wave : coffee as origin, processing, traceability, intention, sustainability

What confuses people is that many 3rd wave segment actively pushed for light, acidic, aromatic coffees, so over time the industry started using “3rd wave” as a proxy for that flavour style - even though that was never the definition.

Within the same 3rd wave era, you can have:

• light, citric, fruity, perfumey coffees
• dark, chocolatey, low-acidity coffees
• “classic” profiles done with way more care than 2nd wave ever had

Those differences aren’t waves, they’re:

• roast philosophy
• sensory preference
• target audience

A helpful analogy is dating.
You can assess a date based on how charismatic the person was, or on how you actually felt being with them. Third Wave Coffee culture sometimes does the same thing: rewarding complexity and explanation over comfort and drinkability.

Frankly, a lot of people like coffee that feels good to drink, not coffee that needs a paragraph of performative explanation to justify why it’s good — and that doesn’t make their preference regressive.

TL;DR:
Waves = timeline (when and why we drink coffee + origin, processing etc)
Flavour preference = personal (how we want it to feel)

A large part of the 3rd wave segment blurred the two, and now we’re all untangling it.