Trying to develop my palate a bit No. 2

Well, I'm still waiting on my whisky order from the government bottle shop. It usually only takes a week, but the Easter holidays means a slightly longer wait. I've been doing some research and finding out what I can about Bunnahabhain and whether or not I can get hold of a bottle of Young and Feisty Provenance. It turns out there are a few bottles in the country and I might be able to get one delivered, but it'll be next month. I've already used up this month's whisky budget. In the meantime I thought I'd share some thoughts about developing the palate.

So I'm at the office and someone just got permanent marker on the desk by accident. At the end of the meeting they got out some crazy solvent to clean it up. "Aha!" I thought to myself. "Here's a chance to smell some kind of freaky chemical that I might not otherwise be able to identify if I smelled it in a whisky." Many whiskies contain flavours and smells that are not typical food type flavours and smells, or indeed typical smells at all. I've found things like road tar coming up, and you don't smell road tar everyday. Maybe you do if you build roads for a living, but most of us don't. I think it's worth paying attention to the smells around us in everyday life, you never know when something obscure will come up in a dram. My Norwegian friend and former housemate Mr. Bjelland and I were tasting a whisky once and we found a smell that was kind of wet foresty, but we couldn't identify it any more accurately than that. A week or so later we were walking through a wet forest with some friends and decided to try to find the smell. It turned out to be fresh pine bark and wet moss. Some of our friends thought we were a little eccentric as we crawled about sniffing everything we could find.

Here's the stuff.

Not something you smell everyday.

It's a crazy solvent with lots of warnings about using it a ventilated area and not setting fire to it. Powerful stuff. I couldn't fully understand the label because it was all in Norwegian, but I think it said that this solvent can dissolve pretty much everything, including glass. When they say "paint related material" I assume they mean it can be used to clean brushes and thin paint and the like.

Nose - A bit like a cross between pine resin and marker pens, with the pine resin part being surprisingly strong and distinct. A bit like gloss paint too, only not as painty. I assume it's something very like the solvent used in marker pens. I didn't actually sniff the bottle, that would have been a pretty bad idea. I did pay close attention to the aroma in the room, which was plenty strong enough to cause an evacuation never mind getting a good smell. 

Palate - Don't be silly.

Conclusion

I have detected similar aromas in whiskies, so I think it was worth paying attention to this smell. In general it's worth paying attention to what smells are around, especially unusual ones. Plus I got a bit of cheap blog filler. It's a much more cost effective way to identify smells that buying an expensive nosing kit. I'd suggest going for a walk through the town and paying attention the the smells. Or a walk in a forest, or through some farm land or wherever. Even through the supermarket. Just generally sniff about. Sometimes it's worth making sure nobody's looking.

Bunnahabhain 12 yo review coming soon.