The shape of crockery or bottles – all that can relay information into the brain about the way it might taste.” Through the many tastings he has conducted around the world, Broom has reached a fascinating conclusion: though the experience of tasting whisky and listening to music is entirely subjective, his guests’ noses and tastebuds respond quite similarly to his musical whisky experiments across countries and cultures. If you go into a restaurant with red walls, the food will tend to taste spicier. “All our senses are relaying information to our brain all the time, so there’s always interaction between them. ‘The way I try to explain it is that everyone is synaesthesic in some way,” he says. Inspired by Spence’s research, Broom has gone further, hosting many pioneering tastings combining music and whisky – although his goal is to create special visceral moments with whisky for consumers rather than for the purpose of an academic study. In 2016, Spence explored the combination of music and whisky more specifically when jazz tracks and curated whiskies from Glenrothes were served to guests at a London jazz club, while their observations were recorded for analysis. In collaboration with The Singleton, he and his colleagues created three differently themed rooms, each with its own custom soundscape – which changed guests’ perceptions of the aroma and flavour of the identical whisky tasted in all three rooms. An expert on crossmodality and perception, he helped lead a ground-breaking 2013 tasting with 441 guests. Scotch whisky expert and author Dave Broom has incorporated sounds and music into his whisky tastings An initial foray into this cross-current was led by Oxford professor Dr Charles Spence. The combination not only opens up new experiences for keen drinkers thrilled at finding new ways to enjoy whisky, but also creates fresh opportunities, both creative and commercial, for brands and producers. However, over the past 10 years there have been ever more experiments and events that drill down on the relationship between music and whisky and its effect and impact on drinkers’ enjoyment of both. It is no secret that sound – and music, specifically – can shift the way in which people perceive the world around them. Despite the fact that we were all drinking the same liquid throughout the tasting, with every track he played we each held up different cards as the aromas and flavours we were sensing in the whisky radically changed as a result of the sounds we were hearing. As he played each track, we silently held up the cards we felt most appropriate to express the aromas and flavours we were experiencing from the whisky. As we tasted the whisky, he played a variety of musical soundscapes into the headsets. Then he handed us notecards with words such as ‘salty’, ‘sweet’, ‘bitter’, ‘metallic’, and ‘mineral’ before serving us a dram of Talisker Storm. The award-winning author and whisky writer kicked the experience off by having his audience, from the 2019 edition of The Whisky Show in London, don wireless headphones. Dave Broom only needed 15 minutes to host one of the most impressive tastings I’ve ever attended.
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