Following Your Nose
Luis Ayala, Editor of "Got Rum?" magazine, Rum Consultant, Founder of The Rum University and CEO of Rum Central.
One of the things I enjoy the most when working with client distilleries (large and small), is doing an inventory of the smells in their facilities and surrounding areas. These “inventories” serve different purposes:
• They help me build a mental map of desirable and undesirable smells, their locations and the potentials for cross-contaminations.
• They help me communicate with marketing and production teams regarding potential differentiators with other distillers, and to design ideal paths and times of day for conducting tours with visitors.
• They provide me with inspiration when it comes to blending rum. Trying to capture, for example, the essence of the smell emanating from the cane press is challenging and exhilarating.
For those of us who use them consciously, our noses are as important, or even more important, than any other tool in our laboratories. Yet, for most of our consumers, their noses rarely have a function beyond the most basic semaphore, issuing reports silently and almost mechanically, about smelled objects being good, bad or so-so.
The good news is that, for the most part, the nose has not devolved into an ornamental feature of our profiles, devoid of its olfactory potential. The potential is there, just dormant, like a seed in a cold storage warehouse, waiting for the time it is called into action.
By performing a few simple exercises each day, like thoroughly smelling each food we are about to put into our mouths or each flower we walk past, we can begin that sleeping seed.
The results of having a nose that can identify and appreciate the aromatic world are incredible, not only for rum drinkers, but for everyone, as the world becomes crisper, more defined and more enjoyable.
Cheers,
Luis Ayala, Editor and Publisher