It’s been a few weeks since I’ve managed to write. August is always an active month, with autumn cocktail menus being signed off and deadlines stacking up. This year also brought travel - flipping flavour with an amazing group of bartenders in Amsterdam, teaching sensory storytelling in Manchester and London, and bringing international cocktails to an event in São Paulo.
So while it feels good to be here again, I’ll admit I’m feeling a little rusty. To get the juices flowing, I’m starting with a question I’ve been asked a few times, yet never quite summed up: What is flavour to me?
Flavour is a commodity we sell, buy and share. Creating with flavour requires more than an understanding of ingredients and classic cocktail structures. It calls for an understanding of people and culture - in particular how we process the spaces we inhabit through our senses. This is a more personal muse on flavour and how I understand it in my everyday life. But it’s worth sharing, as starting with personal experience helps define the wider impact of flavour on our lives.
Flavour is my ride or die. It’s with me no matter what I do or when I do it. In an ever-evolving world, flavour grounds me and connects me to my surroundings and the people who inhabit those spaces. In that respect flavour is relatable, or more than that, it builds relationships between people in a space.
Flavour is memory. Most of my memories hinge on the experience of flavour. Be it trips to Rusholme for spice runs with my family and the subsequent afternoons folding samosas together. Or eating plates full of dim sum after watching the Chinese New Year parade as part of the birthday celebrations my sister and I shared. The experience of flavour is what’s helped those memories stick.
Flavour is anticipation, and it comes in many forms. Growing up, holidays in France meant adventures in the most amazing supermarkets - I’m still a sucker for this on any trip I make, and I know it’s a familiar thrill for anyone who loves food. Then there’s the gamification of flavour, which for me began with the infamous ‘taste tests’ my sister and I played when left to our own devices. Blindfold on, tongue out, a heap of ‘something’ dumped into your mouth while you guessed what it was. I like to think this experience helped my career - though I still have a bald patch on my tongue from my sister’s unfortunate cayenne pepper choice. Anticipation of the unknown and the pleasure we hope it brings, is why we chase flavour.
Flavour is pleasure. I used to feel genuine envy as a child if my plate did not match the adults around me. While envy is not a pleasurable feeling, it can sit alongside it as a precursor that feeds our desires and, in social settings, amplifies our experience of flavour. At the other end of the scale, pleasure can be simple too. A bowl of comfort food, a cocktail at the end of the week or a complexly gourmand dish that jolts the senses - each has the power to completely change my mood. Which brings me to something I learned later in life: flavour isn’t only about receiving pleasure, it’s also about providing it.
At its heart, flavour is curiosity. For me this is what keeps flavour alive, as it becomes a tool to create with. This isn’t necessarily about newness, especially in the context of ‘making something new’, but rather an exploration into the process of asking and answering questions. What do people want to experience? Why are they drawn to it? How can I provide it? This is the part of flavour that fascinates me and makes me want to share it. Curiosity is, in fact, what my work developing cocktails is really all about.
I had an amazing opportunity to listen to you in Amsterdam. That's very beautiful question you ask here yourself, so many layers of meaning to dive in. Thank you so much, appreciated. // Agnes