Flavour nerds

Coming off a whirlwind business trip and subsequent jaunt out to Vegas for a whisky tasting, I missed my promised February blog post. So, I am hoping to get two in for March (one here at the beginning, and another later in the month as well).

This recent trip to Las Vegas was focused on our 3 Drunken Celts‘ event at The Whisky Attic; a seated tasting of 7 unique expressions per person that was crafted just for our group. It was an exceptional experience that provided some once in a lifetime bottle samples. It was an amazing experience that taught everyone in the room something, regardless of their level of experience with whiskies. From complete beginners to weathered old-timers, we all learned something new. The Whisky Attic, you see, is not a bar but rather an education center devoted to bringing a deeper appreciation of whiskies to everyone. Sir Adam Carmer (now a Knight of Belgian Beer) published his thesis on spirits tasting providing an entirely new process to elicit the subtleties from whiskies and other spirits. Dispelling a number of myths around whiskies as well, you get a wonderful and accurate understanding of the spirit.

Unfortunately for me Adam was unable to be at our tasting, but his right-hand guy, JD (who runs most if not all of the tastings currently) handled our crowd with personable candor and aplomb. Take this all as my wholehearted recommendation: make a point of getting to the Whisky Attic as soon as you are able, the experience is a once in a lifetime event (though honestly, hopefully much more often than that) not to miss and will elevate your appreciation for all spirits!

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While I did take notes for each of the bottles I sampled, that is not the purpose of this post… rather, I want to tease out an idea that hit four of us while closing out our Saturday night watching the Bellagio fountains: the concept of flavour nerds.

Having dove deep into flavour profiles the night before at The Whisky Attic, and even the Thursday prior at Cleaver (an amazing steak house in it’s own right), we sat at Hexx with some cocktails, a bottle of Pinot Gris, as well as some ceviche and poke. Finishing off with some caffe macchiatos, we were already knee deep into conversation around the events prior when it dawned on me: we aren’t just whiskies dorks or foodies or wine snobs or coffee geeks, we are indeed flavour nerds.

It doesn’t matter the conduit or delivery mechanism, we’re not so focused on the how, but rather the impact of the flavour profiles, the balance of fat acid salt and heat, of sweetness and bitterness, of texture and viscosities. For a few of us, we truly seek out new experiences rooted in new and exciting flavour profiles. Be it drink or food, it is the umbrella of flavour that pulls us into unknown territories and journeys. We find no limits in discovery of new tastes, intriguing combinations, and simple treatments. We are open to all sorts of trials (to point, while dining at Cleaver in Las Vegas this past week we asked our server if they could make the sauce from our bowl of mussels into a Bloody Mary, which they did, and it was amazing)! Sometimes things work exceptionally well and sometimes they don’t, but in the end it is all about learning more and expanding our palates.

So, in lieu of terms that range from offensive (snobs) to dismissive (foodie) to overly specific (whisky geek), I present to you the idea of Flavour Nerds to capture the depth and breadth of our thirst for knowledge and adventurous seeking of new experiences.

Welcome, friends and family of flavour, to a new way of talking about who we are and what we do!