A love of specialty coffee, and a goal to complement coffee flavors with delicious foods, led Dr. Virginia Utermohlen and Chef Renée Senne to create Paircafé™, to explore the science and art of perfect pairing with coffee.

The science comes from understanding how the receptors for flavor in our mouth and nose work together to enhance our experience of both food and coffee. The art comes from creating exquisite foods to pair with the specialty coffee.

Dr. Virginia is the scientist of the duo. She created Paircafé™'s parent company, Taste Science LLC, after 34 years as a member of the faculty in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca New York, where she earned numerous awards for her teaching.

Since her semi-retirement at the end of 2010, she developed a fresh new approach to understanding what happens when we combine food and beverage in our mouth. She began her work with tea, and has been a highly acclaimed speaker at the World Tea Expo since 2011. Since 2013 she has extended her research to specialty coffees, in particular the superb coffees offered by Gimme! Coffee, headquartered in Ithaca.

Chef Renée is the culinary artist. She trained at the École Varenne in Paris, then returned to the US, to teach at Peter Kump's New York Cooking School (now the Institute of Culinary Education) in New York City.

She then moved to Ithaca New York, to be near her roots. There she was executive chef at two award winning restaurants she created. Next came an exquisite pastry shop — her major culinary interest lies in pastry.

In 2008, Renée began working with the East coast grocery chain Wegmans, teaching culinary skills to up-and-coming store chefs and customers, and training cooks for homes of special needs children and adults. She joined Taste Science LLC in the Fall of 2012, bringing her culinary skills to the development of kits for cakelets that pair perfectly with teas. She is hard at work developing foods to pair with specialty coffees.

Find out more about Pairteas™

Find out more about Gimme! Coffee®