How focusing on scent improves your daily routine

In Monocle Forecast, branding strategist Hugo Macdonald wrote an essay decrying the decline of texture and praising the designers creating products that stimulate touch. He argues that the iPhone’s glossy surface fosters thoughtlessness, whereas sticky key pads forced us to contemplate every number we dialed. But smooth touchscreens aren’t the only technology disfiguring our sensory environments. Backlit screens, noise-cancelling headphones, and artificial sweeteners all change how we see, hear, and taste the world. Yet I’d argue that scent is the most endangered sense. We barely notice it at all.

Perhaps that’s unfair. We do notice scent, but usually when passing a garbage truck in mid-August and not when peeling open a brand-new magazine. This is unfortunate but understandable. Research suggests that we remember negative events better than positive ones so it stands to reason that we’d notice yucky smells over pleasant ones.

Society wants to annihilate unpleasant odors—or at least replace them with less gross ones. From Febreeze to Glade candles, marketers try to convince us that a musty smell begets a messy life. Inoculate your kids against the sulfurous smell of over-boiled broccoli with a plug in de-odor-ifier! If there’s a bad smell you can think of, there’s a product engineered to smother it.

Even cities attempt to erase smell. Complaints about food trucks frequently relate to the aroma of freshly grilled burgers wafting into nearby offices, causing unsolicited hunger pangs. Shops douse their stores in scents to lure in unsuspecting customers. While such actions might not fall under the category of deodorizing, they support the trend against natural aromas.

How did this trend evolve? The history of scent is a complicated with experts writing histories and arguing how a Viking town would have smelled. I am not an expert. But even a cursory glance at the history of scent demonstrates that eschewing natural smells is an invented fetish, one that has quite a bit to do with class.

Before marketers convinced us that a daily lather ensured both personal hygiene and spiritual well-being, cleanliness was an upper-class privilege. Yet we wouldn’t perceive these elites as pristine. Cleanliness was constructed through oils and herbs that doused onto clothes and handkerchiefs or contained in pomanders to sniff if a particularly smelly individual approached. Just think of smelling salts, which used aroma to help coerce people out of fainting spells. Even today, natural aromas are expensive, which emphasizes just how precious these compounds were—and how the elite must have prized them.

Yet it’s not just the monetary divide that characterizes the history of scent, but the lauded scents themselves. Rosewater, cloves, ambergris—the smells our ancestors fetishized weren’t pumpkin spice compounds or engineered to evoke memories of sea breezes. They acknowledged that pleasure existed in nature, even if it could be kinda stinky sometimes.

If only we could appreciate this today! Unfortunately, scent, like touch, is endangered. Consumer society stigmatizes anything other than the perfectly engineered compounds it produces. Why mess with a bouquet of real flowers (or, god forbid, a garden) when you can buy the experience with a one-touch whole room aromatizer? Erasing bad smells isn’t dangerous only because it separates us from the routine yuckiness of being human, but also because it inoculates use to the good aromas we encounter daily. Whether it’s the scent of freshly ground coffee at your favorite a café or the icy smell your loved one wears when they arrive home after work on a cold night, scent is one of our most basic ways of interacting with and appreciating the world. Let’s enjoy it.

Book Review: The Nordic Theory of Everything by Anu Partanen

I’m drinking Swedish coffee from a Moomin mug while listening to Lukas Graham and wearing a Marimekko scarf over my Cos dress. I didn’t need to be convinced by Anu Partanen’s argument in her book The Nordic Theory of Everything—I already dreamt the Nordic dream. I believe that a modern country should provide its citizens with free education, universal health care, and generous vacation days. And I believe that America is in peril because it offers none of the above.

This is the crux of Partanen’s admittedly predictable argument: in the 21st century, Nordic countries practice the American dream better than America itself. You’re not reading The Nordic Theory of Everything to understand this. Instead, you read with a pace reserved for romances and thrillers because Partanen’s commentary offers something revolutionary: hope.

Partanen grew up in Finland and moved to New York after falling in love with an American. But she didn’t fall in love with America. At least not after seeing bums sleeping on the subway and getting a headache filling in tax forms as a freelancer. Unimpressed? Partanen’s dismay at these everyday American affairs proves her point: in comparison to Finland and its Nordic brethren, America fails to secure a high-quality life for all citizens.

In the hands of a lesser author, this message would be inflammatory. But Partanen’s comparisons and juxtapositions illustrate how American society could once again embody the American dream. Her belief in this dream permeates every page.

True, Partanen could give more actionable steps and she could be more realistic about the differences between governing the United States and a small, relatively homogenous Nordic country (at one point, she does mention that States could implement education strategies like the Nordic countries have had success with, but she doesn’t elaborate). But to nit-pick on the lack of to-do lists overlooks the book’s message. Partanen doesn’t want to tell Americans how to correct our society, but rather to inspire us as to America’s potential. And, just a bit, to rile us up at a foreigner’s brazen critique.

It is a critique we need. Unfortunately, the struggle will be encouraging those resistant to listen. As The New York Times mentions in their review, if you didn’t start the book convinced that America needs to become more Nordic, Partanen probably won’t convince you. Thus, it falls to the inspired reader to, armed with data and facts, disseminate her message. Us Americans need to promote a vision of our country as a community that cares for each other—and where everyone is worthy of equal care.

Meet Becherovka: the Czech Republic’s bitter spirit you’ll want to drink straight

Becherovka bottle. Image via Koncern.

You’re in a forest. The towering brown trees turn daytime into night. You reach up to brush away the dense branches and only to discover that the mossy leaves are bottles of Becherovka, the Czech Republic’s favorite bitter herb liquor.

First off: you’re pronouncing it wrong. It’s beck-ur-OHV-ka (emphasis on the ‘h’). Hailing from Western Bohemia, Becherovka combines 32 herbs, roots and spices with spring water from near the town of Karlovy Vary and bunch of sugar before being aged in oak barrels. The process resembles that of any digestif and the taste is similarly inscrutable—you’ll pour half the bottle into your glass as you attempt to identify their proprietary mix herbs, spices and roots. There’s a little cinnamon and a touch of cloves; a twist of mint and citrus; and, perhaps, a touch of anise (though the strength depends on how well you cleaned your glass after sampling absinthe). It’s not the precise flavors that make Becherovka stand out, but the total experience.

Some people liken the taste to cough medicine, which is unsurprising given the fact that the spirit was created in the early nineteenth century as a medicine. Josef Becher first brewed Becherovka in 1807 with the help of his friend, the British doctor Dr. Frobig. They sold the tincture in drug stores as a cure for stomach ailments (though it presumably created more problems if you drank it all at once).

Outside Becherovka Museum in Karlovy Vary. Image via Munchies.

Ever since, the recipe has been a well-guarded secret. It’s rumored that only two people know the ingredients. Once a week during witching hour on Wednesday, this duo slinks away to a secret chamber called the Dragikamr deep in the Becherovka laboratory. They drop the ingredients into their cauldron, stirring three times before chanting the magic words.

Unfortunately, despite its beguiling flavor and history, Becherovka is rare outside eastern and central Europe. Pernod Ricard bought the company in 2001, but the spirit has struggled to woo an international audience. In the Czech Republic, you’re more likely to drink Bechrovka as a chilled shot when visiting a friend’s house for dinner than you are at a cocktail bar. But this is slowly changing. Although the Czech have been drinking bracing Be-Ton, Bechrovka and tonic, since the late ‘60s, only recently have trendy Prague cocktail bars began playing around with other cocktails that feature the bitter digestif.

But you should drink Becherovka in more ways than just straight and with tonic. Top a shot with boiling water for a pine-y hot toddy. Shake it with ice for a bracing Martini. Those 32 herbs and spices create versatile palate for your inner mixologist.

On Babycham, wine in a can, and cyclical drinking trends

"Babycham" might call to mind pastel pink sneakers with teal accents or a My Little Pony figurine or Lady Gaga’s hair circa 2010.

But those aren’t Babycham.

Babycham is a sparkling perry, or fizzy pear cider. It was introduced in Britain in the 1950s as a Champagne alternative. Let’s say you were a Birmingham housewife throwing a Christmas cocktail party for your friends. You’d head to Tesco and pick up a carton of Carling for the men and a few four packs of Babycham for the ladies. During the party, while the guys talked football and guzz;ed, you and your friends would dissect Murder She Wrote and sip Babycham from mini-coupes emblazoned with the leaping deer mascot. Close your eyes and block out the sports talk and you could pretend to be enjoying a flute of Champagne at a café in Paris.

But how did a pseudo-wine with a mascot that resembles Bambi after one too many glasses of cider become a cultural touchstone for Brits? Because women wanted to drink like men. Until the 1960s, alcohol marketing targeted predominately males. If a female ordered beer or spirits at a bar, she seemed promiscuous or cheap. Babycham offered a solution. It was affordable, sweet, and served in controlled portions. When asking for a Babycham, women avoided seeming extravagant and demonstrated their refined palate and constitution. Drinking Babycham meant drinking femininity.

And, frankly, Babycham also meant drinking something quite good. The perry is sweet with a delicate fizz and not-too-assertive fruity flavor, like a cross between cider and bad champagne. Or a Lambrusco from a region where wine doesn’t need to foil aggressively salty prosciutto and Parmesan. It’s a shame that most Brits only remember Babycham during Christmas.

But that doesn’t mean the trends Babycham negotiated are obsolete. Contemporary drink trends emphasize how the alcohol-gender-aspiration link changes regularly. Take wine in a can. Companies such as Portland's Union Wine aim to shift wine’s perception from snobbish and sophisticated to common and cool to convince men that they can drink wine without appearing pretentious or effeminate. Whereas Babycham used branded coupes and a cute animal mascot to present alcohol as feminine, Underwood uses a minimal can to readjust wine’s social signification.

For both beverages, marketing drives the relationship between product and perception. Babycham’s early adverts featured a deer frolicking through animated landscapes and leading couples to hidden stashes of bottles. Although men are present, they never drink it. Instead, Babycham is reserved for women who sip it from glasses, not from the bottle. The slogan, “I’d love a Babycham” implies consent. By agreeing to a drink, women agree to the man offering it. This connection is made explicit with caresses in Babycham adverts from the '70s, but appears in the early ads through the coquettish glances between the male and female protagonists.

Union wine advertisements fight against the feminine association that Babycham promoted. Their advertisements for Underwood wine in a argue that “wine doesn’t have to be this hard” and use the hashtag pinkies down to associate wine with easy pleasure. The new container changes the physical experience of moderation. Each can contains about two traditional glasses, “enough to share, or to keep for yourself”. Emphasizing bounty renders wine a chuggable beverage that doesn’t require reflection on flavor or presentation. Whereas Babycham wooed customers with branded coupes that perfectly fit a bottle, Underwood promises consumers a formless experience that translates seamlessly among drinking situations.

But Babycham changed drinking culture and rendered itself obsolete. Breaking out the coupes with the smiling deer is the beverage equivalent of wearing grandmother glasses. It’s ironic nostalgia. The brand built its market niche on being an acceptable drink for females, but when drinking is acceptable for females, that niche no longer exists. A taste for Babycham is admitting you can’t big guys. It’s a demonstration of nostalgia for a time when a drink seemed like an accomplishment. And doesn’t that seem simple?