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02 February 2007
What the Panel smells
By Charles MacLean

I became chairman of the Society's Panel in 1992, with responsibility for managing tastings, gathering the Panel's comments and writing them up as tasting notes.

The Society had already evolved a famously quirky style for these - created by such literary luminaries as Russell Hunter (actor), W. Gordon Smith (playwright) and Pip Hills (iconoclast), and my brief was to stick with this, develop it and tighten up its accuracy. The notes should be entertaining, but they should also be a helpful guide to members.

There is an inherent problem with this. Identifying and describing smells is a highly subjective business, based on personal experience and directly connected to individual memory. Having the benefit of several comments (i.e. a panel of people) helps to make the notes more objective, but just as the Society celebrates casks that differ from standard bottlings, so we relish individual reactions.

Your Panel would be described by sensory chemists as "hedonic" (the word derives from "hedonism", the pursuit of pleasure). From a linguistic perspective, such panels encourage their members to give free reign to subjective interpretation, no matter how personal or potentially ludicrous!

Of course, subjective analysis is based upon objective sources - the odour-bearing, volatile molecules which trigger responses in our
olfactory nerves. There are two stages to a "nosing": isolating an aroma from a complex of aromas, and describing it. The interpretation and articulation of these responses are entirely personal, based upon individual experience.

When we smell something, we draw, consciously or subconsciously, upon our memory, not only in relation to "having smelled that smell before", but also in terms of what it reminds us of and whether we automatically like or dislike it. It goes without saying that your Panel rises above simple aversion - "Don't like that" - so how do we describe the aroma of whisky? Commonly, we use figurative language - similes and metaphors - likening one sensation to another, or describing a smell in terms of what it resembles. Thus, we might justifiably say "wet dog", "sheep dip" or "creosote" to describe a pungent Islay whisky; "nail varnish remover", "green apples", "ice-cream" or "coconut" to describe a Speyside, matured in American oak.

You will have noticed that "reminds me of . . ." is implicit in all these descriptors. We might go further in our imagery: "it reminds me of my uncle's cars", "Christmas at my grandparents", "blowing bubble-gum in the bicycle sheds at school" [childhood memories, particularly of confectionary, are very common!]. Cynics say this is too personal to communicate anything. On the contrary, such similes are "portmanteau terms" and with only a little imagination communicate a raft of meaning. Depending upon the age of the speaker, the "uncle's car" is maybe a vintage car, with all those smells of leather, rubber, oil and exhaust fumes that made me feel car sick as a child. "Christmas at home" is baking, cooking smells, candle wax, open fires, pine needles. And so on.

Abstract terms such as "clean", "mellow", "rich", "fresh", "smooth" are also useful, although open to misinterpretation. When you say it smells "young" do you mean "lithe" and "vigorous" or "immature"? When you say "mellow", do you mean "well-rounded" or "boring"? The most important thing to remember is that the words we use to describe the aromas found in whisky are not defined, not set in stone.

There are no rights and wrongs. Use your imagination. Dredge your own memory. Be brave. Concentrate. It is not easy to put words to smells, but it enhances your enjoyment, and is great fun! Lots of practice is essential, requiring many samples of the
Society's malts!

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