nosy new year

My bottle acclimates to its Midwestern surroundings.

Happy New Year, nosy readers!  I wish you a 2012 filled with new smell discoveries as well as familiar or forgotten scents that make you swell with emotion.

The holidays were the usual sensory riot. I had a bit of a cold, but still managed to eat more than my share of cookies and breathe in some nice smells:  

• The smokiest scotch I've ever smelled (Pop, if you're reading this, what was that delicious scotch?)
• I drained a full sample of Sweet Redemption for my parents' annual holiday party, and people seemed more eager to hug me than usual (they lingered due to my fragrance rather than their scotch intake).
• I was so happy to unwrap a bottle (pictured above) of Un Bois Vanille (the ideal fragrance to spray on your wool scarf, and I agree it's perfect for layering) and a bundle of beautiful beeswax candles. Both will go a long way towards making the bitter Boston winter warm. 
• The weird, unseasonable warmth in Wisconsin meant that I could smell more manure than usual in winter, when the ground is often frozen. For reasons not exclusively olfactory, I dread the completion of a harrowingly gigantic factory farm under construction right off the highway on the route between my hometown and Madison. (The cows, I heard, are on their way from Nebraska in the new year. Not that I'd prefer Wisconsin cows meet their fate in such a place, but I'm puzzled as to why the Dairy State needs to import its livestock.)
• Alterra Coffee! I visited the main roasting facility on Humboldt, and wanted to set up permanent shop at one of the tables, eating pie, breathing in toasty beans, and talking all day with old friends. 
• A friend had a Mrs. Meyer's Iowa Pine candle going in her bathroom, and I was teased for emerging from the bathroom more than once exclaiming how great it smelled in there. The candle seems to be sold out all over, but I'll be keeping an eye for one out next winter.
• Oh man, if you're ever in Iowa, do yourself a favor and purchase some AE French Onion dip. You may be thinking, I've tried french onion dip in a tub before, and it's not that great. I agree! It usually isn't, but this stuff is so delicious that dipping your chip so deep that your hand comes out creamy is one of my family's most sacred holiday traditions. Viva Midwest!

home state smells

I spotted this punny t-shirt in Wisconsin, where the olfactory highlights of my visit (aside from the
dairy air) have so far been: 

• homemade cinnamon buns courtesy of tomorrow's nosy interviewee 
• cheese frying up on a griddle at the farmers' market in Madison
• fresh-mown lawn on a breezy summer night
• a bouquet of tiny tea roses and six types of rosemary (also at the farmers' market) 

Food and flowers and feces, Wisconsin you do not disappoint.

magical manure

I'd always assumed that the difference between beautiful (really!) and noxious manure smells was entirely a matter of what the cows ate. But my dad sent me an article this weekend that suggested it's a bit more complicated than that (as matters of poop so often are). If you're not inclined to read a four-page academic report on odor management as it relates to animal waste, let me at least share some highlights:

No single compound has been identified as a good predictor of odor sensation across situations in the field. Because of this, human panelists conduct odor measurements and quantify odor intensity and unpleasantness.

Manure sniffer-and-ranker! My future author-bio could put all those bricklaying, fish-gutting, sex-working writers to shame.

And this:

Based on psychological tests, seven primary classes of olfactory stimulants have been found to preferentially excite separate olfactory cells. These classes are: 1) ethereal, 2) camphoraceous, 3) musky, 4) floral, 5) minty, 6) pungent, and 7) putrid. 

Ethereal in this case refers to Ethylene Dichloride (which the EPA says has a "pleasant chloroform-like odor"), but it's more magical to think of it as that heavenly part of the cow poop. Dirt to dirt and all of that.