Latest / The Modern Bar Cart Podcast / Episode 317 - Flavor Synesthesia (Part 1) with Anna Mantheakis

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Episode 317 - Flavor Synesthesia (Part 1) with Anna Mantheakis · The Modern Bar Cart Podcast

0:04
What's shaking drinks fans? Welcome to episode 217 of the Modern Bar Kart Podcast.
0:09
I'm your host, Eric Kozlik. Thanks for joining me for another interview episode
0:15
where I track down the best and brightest minds in the spirits and cocktail world
0:18
so that I can share their secrets with you.
0:21
This time around, I'm joined by Anna Mantheakis.
0:25
She is a Portland, Oregon-based distiller,
0:28
consultant, and writer who consults on recipe development,
0:31
process improvement, and blending.
0:34
And importantly, for the purposes of this conversation,
0:36
she's also a synesthete. This,
0:39
of course, is a person who has synesthesia,
0:42
which is a kind of multi sensory fusion or integration that results
0:47
in markedly different kinds of sense perception than most normal people experience.
0:53
And here's the thing I really wanted to put together some sort
0:58
of featured cocktail for this episode,
1:00
but synesthesia actually makes that.
1:02
Really hard because no two synesthetes are the same.
1:06
I could be like, here's a cocktail that tastes like a mint julep until
1:11
you play the sound of church bells,
1:12
which causes it to taste like a whiskey sour.
1:15
And then you would try it and say,
1:17
that absolutely did not work at all.
1:20
It still tastes like a mint julep.
1:21
And someone with synesthesia might say,
1:24
What are you talking about? The sound of church bells makes things taste earthy,
1:28
not sour. And
1:31
There have absolutely been bars that have launched synesthesia-themed cocktail
1:37
menus, but most of their cocktails have more to do with unexpected
1:41
or hyper-intense color and flavor pairings.
1:45
Like saying this saffron yellow chartreuse cocktail with lemon oil and
1:49
bee pollen is the platonic idea of the color yellow.
1:53
Or on the other hand, with subverting expectations,
1:57
for example, by making something green taste fruity.
2:01
Or making something red or purple taste extremely herbaceous.
2:04
And while I am all for shaking things up and doing cool stuff with color
2:10
and expectations, these kinds of cocktails simply lack the multisensory depth
2:15
of an actual synesthetic experience.
2:18
So apologies for no featured cocktail,
2:20
but I figured better to avoid giving you an inaccurate or reductive sense
2:25
of this episode's target of inquiry before we even get to the interview.
2:31
Speaking of which, in part one of this mind-bending conversation with distiller,
2:36
blender, and synesthete, Anna Mantheakis,
2:38
some of the topics we discuss include:
2:42
a working definition of synesthesia for those of us who don't experience sensory
2:48
spillover in any given perceptual domain.
2:50
The story of how Anna first realized that sound impacted her experience of flavor,
2:57
featuring a five-star restaurant brunch shift.
3:00
A kitchen fan, and a batch of whipped cream.
3:03
How synesthesia impacted Anna's journey as a wine and spirits professional,
3:08
really challenging her to come up with creative ways to maintain consistency without
3:13
completely dulling her sensitivity to certain tastes and aromas.
3:18
We also explore how she has worked auditory cues into her distilling
3:23
and blending practices in order to enhance sensitivity and focus when tasting
3:28
for specific.
3:29
Compounds or flavor attributes.
3:31
Thankfully, these are just audiophiles,
3:35
and this is a podcast, so you'll actually get to hear the sounds that
3:38
Ana uses when running stills or evaluating barrels for blends.
3:42
Along the way, we muse on questions like:
3:45
What if the flavors I'm tasting aren't actually there?
3:49
What if you could hook your nose up to a gas chromatograph?
3:53
Would you eat a taco with crickets on it?
3:56
And much, much more.
3:59
One last exciting piece of news before we get started.
4:01
Anna and her business partner are in the process of launching a
4:04
new distillery in Portland, Oregon called Urban Wild Spirits,
4:08
thus named because they love wildcrafted plants and they're
4:12
in gritty industrial central east side Portland.
4:15
They'll be making whiskey with creative finishes and other spirits with wild
4:20
ingredients, so keep your eyes out for that new venture and
4:25
the delicious bottles that are sure to result from it.
4:29
Follow them on Instagram at UrbanWildSpirits.
4:32
And in the meantime, please enjoy part one of this audio gustatory flavor
4:38
exploration with Anna Mantiakis.
4:44
Anna, welcome to the podcast.
4:46
Thank you. Good to be here.
4:48
So
4:49
could you kick us off with just a quick introduction?
4:52
Who are you? And generally speaking,
4:54
what do you do?
4:56
my name's Anna Mantheagis. I am a distiller in Portland,
5:00
Oregon. I used to be a winemaker before I got into whiskey
5:05
and other distilled spirits.
5:09
I remember the first time I came across you and your work was at ADI
5:14
in Baltimore a couple of years ago now.
5:17
And it as I think back on the session description,
5:21
to most people it would sound like kind of like dry,
5:25
boring technical stuff, right?
5:26
It's like about scaling a gin formulation between two different stills
5:31
of different capacities. And yet it was one of the most fascinating presentations
5:37
that I've ever
5:38
Sat in on. So that of course is what brought me to your presentation
5:43
at ADI this year in Miami, which brings us to the topic of this conversation.
5:47
so could you just tell us what is synesthesia and when
5:54
did you realize that you happen to perhaps experience flavor differently than most
5:59
other people?
6:01
So synesthesia is theorized to come from hyperconnectivity in the brain.
6:06
And it's when an experience in one sense causes an experience in another.
6:13
You can think of it as activity in one brain region or brain,
6:17
parts of the brain responsible for one sense,
6:19
spilling over into another sense.
6:21
So one great example a lot of people already know about,
6:24
even though they don't realize it's synesthesia,
6:26
is musicians who see colors when they hear music.
6:30
What's happening in their brains is that stimulus to the parts
6:34
of the brain responsible for processing sound is spilling over to parts
6:38
of the brain responsible for vision,
6:40
and they're having an automatic involuntary visual experience while they hear
6:45
sounds. But there's tons of ways for this to happen.
6:47
Some people hear sounds and they feel sensations on their bodies,
6:50
right? Some people taste a flavor when they see a color.
6:54
There's dozens of ways for our senses to interact.
6:58
Yeah. And the involuntary part would seem to be important here because,
7:04
you know, one question that I had about synesthesia,
7:08
~ that as I was as I was thinking about our conversation today,
7:13
kind of popped into mind was it's like,
7:15
well, everybody's a little weird in a certain way,
7:19
right? Like everybody has their own idiosyncrasies,
7:22
but
7:23
When when does something like a cultural difference,
7:27
for example, defining ~ like clove as more
7:33
of a savory spectrum flavor versus more of a sweet spectrum flavor?
7:37
Or when does like a personal preference,
7:39
like for example, I happen to be very averse or sensitive to like a gritty texture,
7:45
~ in a way that might like overlap in a very small way with somebody who's in like a
7:53
autism spectrum kind of like stimulated way,
7:56
but I would never go so far as to say that I have like any sort of autism,
7:59
right? So like where does where does the personal and more cultural sides
8:03
of this like we all kind of experience the the world in somewhat weird
8:07
and different ways stop and the actual like synesthesia,
8:11
this this spilling over and this involuntary this involuntary fusion experience
8:17
begins.
8:18
Yeah, that's a great question.
8:20
And the simple answer, I think,
8:23
is it's synesthesia if it happens automatically
8:28
and it's highly consistent. So for example,
8:31
if you're a musician who sees colors when you're hearing music,
8:35
the same sound will produce the same colors your whole life.
8:38
They may fade as you get older,
8:40
but it'll be produced the same colors your whole life.
8:42
And it's what they call idiosyncratic,
8:44
which means there is no logic behind it.
8:46
It might
8:48
Line up sometimes to make a little sense.
8:51
People who see colors for flavor,
8:53
maybe maybe somebody does see lime green when they taste a lime.
8:56
They could also see purple when they taste a lime.
8:58
And if they see purple when they taste a lime,
9:00
they will see that every single time.
9:01
And it's not related to any experience they've had in their life.
9:04
It just is. Those are the things,
9:06
those are the constraints that scientists look to to define synesthesia
9:10
and set it apart from other kinds of associations.
9:14
The associations that we make through life experience,
9:16
for example.
9:19
That makes a lot of sense. And I I have a feeling that we may end
9:22
up returning to this idea of the highly consistent and the idiosyncratic.
9:26
And to me, another word that kind of ~ jumped in there,
9:31
specifically pertaining to tasting and the way that that professionals like
9:34
you and I tend to taste things is structured,
9:36
right? There seems to be some sort of structure or repeatability about this that
9:41
that seems to be important. So I'm really glad that you were able to kind
9:46
of break that down for us.
9:48
When when did synesthesia and flavor start to enter into your life
9:55
and affect you as a a flavor professional?
9:57
Like you mentioned, you started in wine.
10:00
Yeah. So I already had clues before I went to wine school that I was different.
10:07
I guess the first like moments was when I was working at the restaurant.
10:12
My dad managed a five star restaurant for 34 years.
10:16
And so of course he got me working there as soon as he as soon as I was old enough,
10:20
right? And I'm in the kitchen and I'm plating up waffles with whipped cream
10:25
for brunch and I'm sneaking little tastes of the whipped cream.
10:27
And the whipped cream tastes like skim milk with bleach in it.
10:30
It tastes thin and wrong and like and like there was bleach in the container.
10:34
So then I went to the pastry chef to say,
10:38
I think there was bleach in this container.
10:40
Something needs to be done about the whipped cream.
10:42
And she tasted it and told me it was fine.
10:43
And I did something that felt totally natural to me at the time,
10:47
which was go out to the quiet dining room and taste it again.
10:49
And the whipped cream tasted good.
10:51
And my first thought was, it's just the kitchen fans.
10:54
The kitchen fans were making it taste like that.
10:57
And then my second thought was that was just me.
11:00
The pastry chef did not taste that because of the kitchen fans.
11:03
So I go into wine school with these with this hunch that I'm already
11:07
a little different, I don't know why.
11:09
And then I find myself in these tastings,
11:11
these group tastings with other wine students,
11:13
and my wine changes as we're tasting.
11:16
~ because everyone starts out real quiet and focused,
11:19
and then people start to talk.
11:21
And then the conversation in the room rises.
11:24
And it gets more and more that muffled chatter,
11:26
and I'm and I'm struggling with my notes because the more the sounds around
11:31
me change, the more I'm seeing it in real time.
11:33
I'm paying attention now, right?
11:36
Paying more attention than I did previously in my in my life.
11:39
And noticing how much it affected me.
11:43
So I think wine school brought more full awareness,
11:46
even though I already knew it wasn't something I had to think about until
11:51
I sat down and had to be a professional about tasting.
11:55
Yeah. And I I imagine that was probably at least
12:00
a little bit unsettling. I mean,
12:03
on one hand, you made the you made the choice to like go to wine school knowing that
12:07
maybe that you had some sort of unique sensory experience.
12:11
~ but on the other hand, I that that I'm sure that didn't make
12:15
it less intimidating to now like converse with these people and try to
12:21
be on some sort of same page. How how did that ~ how did that go for you?
12:26
It was so intimidating. Fortunately,
12:29
I went to wine school at UC Davis.
12:30
I got my master's degree there in viticulturinology,
12:35
specializing in the in the yeast microbiology of fermentation.
12:38
So I was surrounded by scientists.
12:40
And being surrounded by scientists,
12:43
I could find people who may not have known what exactly was going on,
12:46
but would at least listen, at least consider that this probably
12:51
has a neurological basis.
12:53
Maybe it hasn't been described,
12:55
but it's okay because most things in the universe have not yet been studied
12:59
and described. But there wasn't much anyone could do for me because
13:05
I couldn't do my sensory labs,
13:07
for example, in another room just because of how the university
13:10
was about wine tasting. So I I had to taste wine,
13:14
you know, in the teaching kitchen where there were fans,
13:17
and fans do terrible things for flavor.
13:19
I had to taste in a lot of environments where the sound wasn't controlled.
13:22
And it felt to me like I lost my anchor.
13:27
I lost my my ~ consistency.
13:31
And so my solution was to put in earplugs every time I tasted.
13:35
And that didn't always get the best reaction from classmates
13:42
or or after I left school, people in the wine industry.
13:44
Because people would see me tasting with earplugs in,
13:47
and they'd always ask, What are you doing?
13:49
And when I tried to explain it to them.
13:51
They look at me like I was crazy.
13:54
Hmm. Yeah, so that also brings up something I've I've been thinking about,
14:00
which is typical versus atypical experience,
14:04
right? And on the one hand, we have this thing looming in the background,
14:09
the hard problem of consciousness.
14:10
It's really difficult for me to know if what I'm experiencing is in
14:15
any way ~ similar or analogous to what another person on the street
14:19
is is experiencing. But
14:21
You you've clearly identified that this is a a standout example of
14:26
the an atypical form of sensory experience.
14:29
And in the literature of talking about experience,
14:35
things that come up in that realm tend to be stroke victims.
14:40
So people who previously had like a full working cerebral cortec cortex,
14:45
and then now we have these neuroscientists and psychologists kind of
14:51
Running tests on them to see what that portion of their brain that they lost might
14:56
have been responsible for in a structured way.
14:58
~ we also have twin studies, these people who are genetically identical.
15:03
And then so now we're playing ~ the we're trying to turn knobs
15:07
on nature versus nurture, what's responsible for what aspect of development there.
15:11
~ and then in the flavor world specifically,
15:14
it makes me think of like people who are either super tasters or
15:19
People who have the dreaded cilantro gene,
15:21
where cilantro tastes like soap to them.
15:23
And all of these things, whenever I think about these atypical kinds
15:30
of experience, however you want to define atypical,
15:33
when it comes to flavor, it seems to be working in direct sort
15:39
of conflict with presumably like what you were going to this wine school to study,
15:43
which was the structured way to identify,
15:45
like, yep.
15:46
This is what this wine is. This these are the characteristics that these grapes
15:49
or these this strain of yeast tends to elicit.
15:54
so how did how did you start aside from just the silencing,
15:58
which seemed like it it had its own like social problems?
16:01
How did you start to kind of make your way back from this place of like
16:06
the atypical to someone who is now ~ doing like this highly structured
16:12
and highly like fastidious?
16:14
Gin recipe scaling, for example,
16:16
and other amazing contract distilling worth that you're doing.
16:19
Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I think what you bring up is really fair that that
16:25
workflows, I guess, and and workplace ~ technique,
16:30
especially standard approaches,
16:32
are not always made with neurodivergent people in mind.
16:35
And that's not because evil people made this.
16:38
It's just because they made an approach to suit the most people.
16:43
So they were thinking of ordinary people.
16:47
Right, in creating approach to kind of like suit what we might conceptualize
16:50
as the average person. I don't think the average person actually exists.
16:54
I think that is a concept more than a reality.
16:56
But you can think of it as suits the average person,
16:59
right? And that can leave neurodivergent people out.
17:02
And it definitely did for me, because it's so important on the one hand
17:06
to have a standard tasting environment.
17:08
I was experiencing this a lot at Davis,
17:09
and it's very important. Our environments influence and all influence
17:13
us in all sorts of ways, and that can make us
17:17
inconsistent from one moment to the next and they needed solid scientific data,
17:21
which means consistency and standardization.
17:25
And for me, I couldn't even standardize reliably.
17:30
This is what caused me the most anxiety in the wine school,
17:33
right? First I noticed that sounds were distorting and manipulating flavors,
17:38
something that felt natural to me,
17:39
but wasn't making me consistent when I tasted.
17:42
And when I tried to block that out in silence,
17:46
Everything became kind of blands.
17:48
And my sensitivity dropped. My brain actually needs sound to be sensitive to flavor.
17:54
So what does that leave you with?
17:56
There is no single flavor in the universe that's like a standard to me.
17:59
Or sound in the universe that's like a standard to me.
18:02
Every sound enhances and diminishes different flavor attributes
18:06
and manipulates mouthfeel in its own way.
18:08
And I spent I spent a good six years of my winemaking career out there in the world.
18:15
wearing earplugs before I finally decided to become intentional about using sound
18:19
in my work and finding my new standard that way.
18:22
And I did that when I switched to whiskey,
18:25
actually. I had I had spent six years in winemaking.
18:29
I traveled around the world. I never once used sound on purpose until until
18:35
I decided to reinvent myself and make a career change.
18:39
And that was when I thought if I'm going into spirits and trying something new,
18:43
I might as well
18:45
reinvent how I taste. And that meant using sounds on purpose,
18:50
using sounds that enhanced flavors that
18:54
are important or definitive for what I'm making,
19:00
and tasting across multiple sounds in order to see the spirit a few different ways.
19:04
And for people who are having a hard time imagining this,
19:08
I compare it to evaluating a beautiful painting.
19:12
colorful painting by shining different colors of light on that painting
19:16
and seeing how it looks under a blue light versus a red light versus
19:20
a green light because the colors in the painting will change when
19:23
you change the light. Like the flavors in the whiskey change when
19:26
I change the sound. And I use this to like enhance sensitivities
19:31
and focus essentially on flavors that matter.
19:33
And I used it when I was making the Four Corners gin.
19:36
That's what I talked to ADI about,
19:38
was was developing the Four Corners Gin and then
19:42
And then redeveloping it for a new still.
19:43
I used it in blending whiskey.
19:45
I worked at Westward Whiskey, where I was on the blending team and I did
19:50
~ the core blends, where we choose 20 to 40 barrels for one of our bottling batches,
19:55
and you're screening barrels and accepting them.
19:57
And I used sound to evaluate and screen my barrels and to evaluate
20:01
the final blends for the attributes that I wanted it to have.
20:04
And my new one, yeah, my new standard ended up being sort of a scanning technique.
20:11
I'm I'm not just seeing it one way.
20:12
I'm kind of scanning across I don't know,
20:14
it's like tuning a radio, I guess.
20:16
Does that make sense? I throw a lot of metaphors at you.
20:19
I hope they all come together and make it make sense.
20:21
Well, so I I I love that. And I what I was gonna ask is is what what specifically
20:27
that looked like. Because I think this is the this is the part where
20:30
we wanna slow down and actually get a picture of it.
20:34
And you know, we don't have to play the sounds,
20:36
but I'd at least love you love to have you,
20:37
as you did in ~ in Baltim ~ in Miami rather,
20:41
~ describe the sounds that you're using,
20:44
maybe why you selected those sounds,
20:46
because we know from one example that you gave.
20:49
That kitchen fans made whipped cream taste like insipid,
20:53
bleachy, watery badness. ~ so what are some of the sounds that
20:59
you selected to help you dial in on more ~ happy flavors,
21:04
we'll put it?
21:05
For sure. It started with me making still cuts and experimenting there.
21:09
So I have my tails cut sounds,
21:12
which is sort of ~ a hum, but it's like an electronic sort of hum is the best
21:18
way I can describe it.
21:23
The texture of like really heavy cold metal,
21:26
but that you could put your hand through if you tried to touch it,
21:28
which I know is a very synesthesia thing to say,
21:30
because I have textures for sounds too,
21:32
but it's a particular hum. And when I play this hum,
21:36
some aromas and flavors will diminish a little bit,
21:39
but I'm more sensitive to this sort of sweet,
21:43
oily, like a sweet avocado oil flavor that comes
21:49
out right at end.
21:53
Right before you make the tails cut.
21:54
It's a desirable flavor to like give richness to the whiskey.
21:59
And then as soon as it fades and the whiskey becomes bitter,
22:03
that's the tails cut. And so I would use that sound to track my tails cut.
22:07
And I had one for the heads cut.
22:10
Opposite of is I was going for the opposite effect with the heads cut.
22:14
In the heads, there's this flavor that reminds me of formaldehyde,
22:18
an aroma that's
22:19
Reminds me formaldehyde, probably because I'm hypersensitive
22:22
to something other people may not pick up,
22:23
but it masks everything else. So I would play a sound that was this this kind
22:28
of cicadas.
22:34
And the cicadas diminished that enough for me to pick up more of like
22:38
the fruity berry notes and be able to like observe the transition from harsh
22:43
insolventy to fruity berry notes that told me when to make the heads cut.
22:49
I have one for cislactone, because I'm not actually very sensitive
22:53
to cislactone without this sound.
22:55
So when I was screening my barrels and selecting barrels for blends,
22:59
I needed to pay attention to that so it doesn't end up overly coconut.
23:03
And that is the one of the ugliest sounds on my playlist.
23:07
When you have synesthesia, you don't get to choose.
23:09
They're not all nice sounds. They're just the sounds that poke me in
23:12
the right part of my brain. And it's somebody playing with me on the clarinet badly.
23:19
And trigger that spillover, right?
23:21
Exactly. Yeah, I'm triggering the spillover.
23:23
And it could be the most hideous sound in the world,
23:26
but some things actually could taste great with it.
23:29
Interesting. So, all right. I've I'm following I would say most of this.
23:36
And since you've got these files,
23:37
I may we we may circle back and I may see if I can actually grab some
23:41
of these files from you and actually play them for our listeners because
23:44
I think that would be really fun.
23:45
But so I love the cut
23:50
use case here because the cuts as a still runs,
23:55
a cut is a point.
23:58
In a it's it's a decision point in a process where you are drawing a line.
24:02
You're saying on this side we're gonna keep this,
24:05
and on this side, we're gonna throw all the rest of this away because that's tails
24:09
and we don't want it, or that's heads and we don't want it for
24:14
any number of reasons, right? Health and safety or flavor-wise.
24:17
And but but what it is is is is it there's still art to this.
24:21
You still have to decide at what point during the running of this still you're going
24:27
to
24:27
Make this optimization call based on the flavors that you're perceiving.
24:31
So, how did you use the noise?
24:34
Did you use it like a tuning fork almost?
24:36
And then see if the flavor was able to,
24:41
in your senses, vibrate or resonate at the same frequency,
24:46
so to speak, as that tuning fork sound?
24:48
Or was it something different?
24:51
yeah, maybe I should just kind of like describe the raw experience a little more
24:54
in a little more detail, if that's what you want to know.
24:57
Yeah. So say I'm tasting
25:01
a whiskey with I think cislactone is an easier one for me to make this comparison
25:07
with. Like a light amount of cislactone,
25:09
right? And I'm tasting it in silence and I don't pick up a cislactone.
25:13
And then I switch on the sound of that ugly clarinet playing a G.
25:19
As soon as it turns on, I smell cislactone.
25:21
It's like turning on a light. It's instant.
25:23
Right? I may not, I may not pick it up immediately if I'm desensitized,
25:28
which is normal, right? I I get desensitized too.
25:31
I've been smelling it a lot. My brain's desensitized to the cislactone.
25:35
So I may need to give myself like a second revisit,
25:38
right? But the effect is instantaneous.
25:40
It's in an immediate effect,
25:43
and that at the same time as that happens.
25:46
~ I can smell it now. Whoa, it's there.
25:48
It's been there the whole time.
25:49
~ the sensation in my mouth changes.
25:52
The alcohol is suddenly hotter with that sound.
25:55
Cause I get mouthfeel distortions too from sound.
26:00
Right, and then I turn back off,
26:02
gone. Instantly gone.
26:04
It's so fascinating.
26:06
I could just like turn it off and on.
26:08
I c I've done this with tacos,
26:09
with street tacos, right? The really limey note that I'm enjoying with like
26:13
my crickets. I just turn them off and on and I watch it appear and
26:16
go away and appear and go away.
26:19
And crickets not in the taco but but on but on your your headphone.
26:22
Crickets are in my headphones.
26:24
Yes, I should be clear about that.
26:25
Not that I would turn down a taco with crickets in it.
26:28
Sound
26:28
Agreed. Hard agreed.
26:30
so bad. I've never encountered that in the world,
26:32
but if somebody's making them I want one.
26:34
Yep. So I one thing one thing I want to be very careful
26:41
to point out here for listeners,
26:42
because this is such a trippy thing.
26:45
We're already even if there was no synesthesia involved in our conversation,
26:50
we would still have a hard time trying to describe to each other what
26:54
our experiences are like. But because we have this slightly atypical
27:00
for most people phenomenon that we're describing,
27:03
I want
27:04
To be very careful to underscore something that you pointed out,
27:10
which is not that by turning
27:14
on this audio prompt
27:19
or sound that suddenly you made the whiskey taste like cislactone
27:26
to yourself. ~ it's so in that case,
27:29
in in this, what I'm saying is it was not a cislactone generator.
27:33
Right. You're not generating an illusion by this.
27:36
What you're doing is you're using it to ~ just look
27:42
Something that's there.
27:43
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's hard for people to wrap their heads around,
27:47
right? Because it's hard for me to wrap my head around.
27:49
Yeah, well, for the longest time I wasn't sure either.
27:51
Honestly. I kept myself up at night thinking about that.
27:56
What if the things I'm tasting aren't really there?
27:58
Because there are types of synesthesia where people hear a sound and they have
28:03
a spontaneous flavor. I don't experience that.
28:05
I'm a weirdo in this regard. Like I've not yet found another person with
28:09
my specific experience of synesthesia.
28:13
But there's other people out there,
28:14
they hear a sound and they just taste pineapple,
28:15
right? And I thought
28:18
What if this is happening, you know,
28:19
my brain? But I it only happens when I'm already tasting something.
28:23
I hear it's on, I taste pineapple,
28:24
and it's not really there. I just poke myself in the brain,
28:27
I tasted pineapple, and it's totally irrelevant.
28:30
But I've spent a lot of time tasting with other people.
28:34
And I'll taste the same thing with many people to kind of test
28:38
out different people's sensitivities.
28:40
And what I find more often than not is as I make distortions and
28:44
I notice different flavors, I can find at least one other person.
28:48
Who notices the flavor because of their particular sensitivities.
28:52
So I believe that what I'm detecting is things that are there.
28:54
In that kitchen, there might have just been some bleach in the air,
28:57
right? Or maybe there was such a tiny trace amount of bleach from the last time that
29:02
container was sanitized that the fans brought it out,
29:05
but only to me. So this is my belief is that what I'm tasting is most likely there.
29:12
At least I really hope so. But
29:16
I can also have experiences that are very weird if I manipulate my senses too much.
29:20
If I push them too far, I will taste things that nobody else reports because
29:24
I just poke myself in the brain too hard.
29:26
And I gotta be very careful about that.
29:28
Hmm. Yeah. man, I have so many questions for you.
29:32
Just going going straight off straight off the list that I sent,
29:35
~ off into completely different directions.
29:38
One would be, have you ever considered doing any yeah,
29:42
for all I know you've already done this,
29:44
but have you ever considered tasting against like a GCMS ~ like
29:49
a like a actual chemical readout where they have like you can actually
29:53
see a spike of cislactone, for example?
29:56
I've always wanted to try G C O G C Lectometry.
30:00
Do you know about that?
30:01
G C O or L?
30:03
So think of a a gas so GCCMS, right?
30:06
It's a gas chromatograph which separates the things and then
30:10
~ mass spectrometer which detects the things,
30:13
right? What if you took the mass spectrometer away and you just put like
30:16
a little nose cup on the end of the G C and that's GCO.
30:21
I have a I have a picture from the Scotch Whiskey Research Institute because
30:24
I was in Edinburgh in ~ in June and I visited,
30:27
it was very cool. But but you can stick your face up to the little nose cup.
30:32
And identify things or describe things as they come off the GC.
30:36
That's a technique. Not very many people have them.
30:39
I've always wanted to try that just to find out.
30:43
What could I tune as I go?
30:48
You know, a new is coming off and I'm not that sensitive,
30:52
and I like flipped through my sounds and I find the one.
30:54
And then I could just archive it.
30:57
Right? I could tag that sound.
31:02
man.
31:03
apricot
31:04
and then I'll always know for the rest of my life that's the one.
31:09
Yeah, well and then at the at that point I think we would have to create some sort
31:12
of weird ~ sort of like avant garde jazz playlist of your experience of flavor.
31:19
~ yeah.
31:23
So I mean I mean ~ I d I I have so many flavor nerd things that
31:30
are that are like popping off in my head right now.
31:32
Another one is have you ever come across this concept in ~ I guess like
31:38
It would be more in the the brain sciencey literature
31:43
~ n complex system science known as criticality.
31:47
Have you ever come across criticality?
31:49
My fiance used to work in a nuclear reactor,
31:52
but I sounds like we're talking about something else.
31:55
Maybe, maybe not. I don't know the f I'm I'm less on the physics side,
31:58
but so criticality is is kind of like in a complex system,
32:03
as I understand it, and this ties in with you know,
32:06
kind of like what you just said about like having to be careful with
32:09
how far you push your senses. It's kind of like riding this wave between signal
32:15
and noise, right? A a very boring,
32:18
non-complex system doesn't really have much information in it.
32:21
It's just there's not much going on.
32:23
It's boring, right?
32:25
But a highly chaotic system has so much different stuff pinging around everywhere
32:31
that it's hard to make heads or tails of what might be going on.
32:34
It's hard to, you know, to to answer that question of like,
32:38
is what I'm tasting really there?
32:40
So it seems like a lot of what you've been describing has been this negotiation
32:46
between literally blocking out block you know,
32:48
blocking out stimuli and making the environment as quiet as possible,
32:52
which then
32:53
deprives you of sensitivity. And then also finding structured ways
32:57
to increase the surface area of what you or the,
33:02
you know, give yourself different angles at what you can possibly perceive without
33:06
going overboard and making it complete chaos.
33:09
Is that somewhat accurate?
33:11
I think so. And I think that I'm also playing a lot with thresholds.
33:14
And the more complex the system and the more like the more flavors present
33:20
the near the threshold, the more I'm gonna see it change.
33:23
Because if I am tasting something that is so orange,
33:28
it's just like powerfully orange,
33:30
it's intensely orange, it's way over my threshold for detecting orange.
33:33
I can flip through a few sounds and it might change in subtle ways,
33:36
but I still smell orange, like no matter what.
33:40
But for flavors that are more subtle,
33:41
flavors near the threshold, that those are the ones that change the most.
33:45
So think of a ~ like the simple spirits
33:51
in the world are harder for me to manipulate.
33:54
The more complex ones are easier.
33:56
But then complexity is,
33:59
I guess that concept itself can be a little.
34:03
That word is fraught because we think of complexity as something that
34:06
may have like a lot of ingredients or a lot of different treatments
34:09
or you bit blended a bunch of different things together.
34:11
Sometimes I'll taste a vodka infusion that had one thing in it,
34:15
lavender. But lavender is a composite flavor.
34:18
It has many different in the in the lavender plant,
34:21
there are many different aromas that come together to create
34:24
the impression of lavender. And that's one that I can manipulate with sound a lot.
34:30
Yeah, that's that's it. Well, there's a lot of definitely a lot
34:32
of compounds in lavender that are contributing to that.
34:35
And and especially when you run it through a still ~ still,
34:38
you know, the difference in extraction techniques means you're getting
34:42
a different lavender anytime you taste something that is lavender infused as well.
34:46
So where to go from here?
34:50
~ we've talked about some of the ways that you've adapted ~ your tasting.
34:56
What are some of the ways that
34:59
that you've found that the synesthesia you have and the approach that
35:05
you have developed for blending and ~ analyzing spirits,
35:12
what are some of the more like,
35:13
I guess, delightful ways that that you found that this is like been like
35:17
a really active enhancement to your work or to your just your personal enjoyment
35:21
of flavor?
35:23
Yeah. It's a great question. One way that learning how to kind
35:29
of harness my synesthesia has contributed to my enjoyment of both work
35:34
and spirits in general is No,
35:37
just my enjoyment of spirits in general.
35:38
Actually I'm gonna s I'm gonna take this outside of work.
35:40
Yep. This is this is when I'm at the bar or the restaurant,
35:43
right? If I don't like something,
35:45
I pull out my playlist and see what I can do with it.
35:48
And I might have a sound that makes it taste great.
35:53
much better than where it started.
35:54
And I might be sitting at the table with people who aren't huge fans
35:59
for reasons that I understand because the first sound I tried with this drink
36:05
did make it a little too sweet or a little too floral.
36:07
But all I have to do is like scroll through the playlist and I I might just find
36:11
something that makes it taste fabulous.
36:13
And then it's good just for me.
36:16
So I do like that. It's not always possible.
36:20
I can't always pull that trick,
36:21
but but sometimes I can.
36:24
That's so funny. I'm trying to think of like an analogy of that
36:28
for like non-cinesthesia people that is also like non-flavor.
36:33
So like something that you could do to like suddenly like make waiting
36:37
in line at the DMV suddenly like not a not a terrible awful
36:42
I guess imagine if you were like at a club and you had like a little filter
36:46
in your ear, right? And they're playing some club music that has these high pitched
36:50
whiny sounds that you can't stand.
36:52
You just hate this music, but you you just have the option of filtering it out.
36:56
It'd
36:57
Yeah, true.
36:57
be convenient. I think that we can imagine other ways where filtering
37:02
is convenient or distorting your sensory inputs is convenient.
37:05
It doesn't necessarily mean you're hearing the same song as everyone else.
37:07
But you can enjoy it.
37:11
Yeah, no, I think that's a that's a perfect metaphor.
37:23
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37:25
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38:29
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38:41
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38:44
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38:48
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38:55
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