The Nose Knows

Explore the world of whisky through the eyes of a master perfumer in The Macallan’s Edition No. 3.

- Kenny Leong

Much of what we perceive as flavour comes from the sense of smell. It is the reason why everything seems to taste bland and insipid when we have a cold or when our noses are blocked.

“The sense of smell is the most primitive sense,” says master perfumer Roja Dove, who worked at Guerlain for 20 years before starting his own business, a fragrance collection known as Roja Parfums. “Smelling allows us to find food, or to find a mate,” he explains.

Smelling – which refers to the ability to pick out aromas – is the penultimate sense employed in the world of wine and spirits. It becomes obvious that Dove’s world is not too different from the world of crafting drinks, and which also served as the inspiration for The Macallan’s latest release, Edition No. 3.

THE CONVERT

One might be surprised to learn, however, that the 61-year-old master perfumer was anything but a whisky drinker. “I remember when I was first approached by The Macallan to explore the possibility of a collaboration, I said to them, ‘Sure, but only if you first understand that I hate whisky.’” Undaunted, The Macallan invited Dove up to the distillery in Speyside for a meeting with master whisky maker Bob Dalgarno.