Re: Old Sottish Maps


"MB" <MB@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:313030303037313545F741DB17@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
I don't drink but was with a colleague from work when he was offered
a
25 year old Laphroig from under the bar. I don't think it was
generally
available (the bar was on Islay) but even I could by smell that it
was
nothing like the usual Laphroaig.

Then he was a discerning barman to identify the sort of customer
willing to pay what a dram of any 25-year old whisky would cost. Good
for him.

But also good for you. For fairly obvious reasons it isn't possible to
drink small amounts from dozens of barrels in order to determine the
optimum mix for bottling and sale. Professionals do it by 'nosing'.
that is they smell the differences. It's something 25% of the
population can't do at all and 50% are not going to be any good at
however hard they try. Just 25% have the nasal equipment. It's a
genetic thing. You can be fairly sure that if you go into a lab of
organic natural product chemists the 'sensitives' will be 100% of the
lab population. Largely because sensitivity to smells is a survival
advantage in such a lab.

If you've got the genetics (and have raised a glass or two to the
ancestors for the gift), the next step is to commence training the
nose. The elementary stage is to learn how to cut fractional
distillations of smelly things. It only requires a sensitive to have a
very short-term memory since it is a matter of seconds to move from
one fraction to the next. Most sensitives should quickly get the cut
to no more than one fraction different from where an experienced pro
would cut.

Even amongst sensitives, very few have the long-term memory to be
able to store up a bank useful for analysis, and amongst them a very
tiny number have what might be called 'absolute smell' analogous to
the absolute pitch' some musicians have. Whether the rare absolute
smellers get it from their ancestors or are simply sensitives with
very good memories is not known. But wherever they get it from, these
are the few people who can become chief blenders, chief perfumers,
chief anything in smells. These are the sort of people who can
identify 10.000 to 20,000 separate volatile compounds, and moreover
can analyse a complex mixture of volatiles by smell alone much faster
than an ordinary mortal can get a sample into a gas chromatograph.

The problem they all have is that the nose gets tired. They cannot
abide smells ordinary folk find tolerable or even don't notice. When
they say something smelly has to be shut down, it has to be. When they
say they are going for a stroll in the fresh air outside the nosing
room, they have to be let go. The whole process depends on the
sensitivity of a single nose on a single occasion.

The problem with genealogy versus environment is that it is not easy
to separate the contributions from genes, memory and very long
experience to what top whisky blenders do. The observation is that
there are more people capable of doing it in families long in the
whisky business than there are people appearing out of a clear blue
sky who can do it with no decades of learning. But perhaps you, MB,
are one if you are quick enough to notice the different smells of old
and older Laphroiag in the non-ideal conditions of a bar.


Don


.

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