Science calls it the "Proust Effect" that instant neural shortcut where a scent pulls you back to a specific memory.
Dramfly
3 mins read
You know the moment. You’re at a friend’s house, a whisky festival or in a cosy pub. Someone pours you a dram you didn’t expect to like… and suddenly you’re smiling. It’s fruity. Or smoky. Or it has this weirdly specific note, like vanilla, orange peel or the cupboard where your gran kept her recipe books.
You nod, you chat, you get distracted by a million other flavours, noises, chats… and then, a week later, the name has vanished from your brain.
This isn’t a personal failing. It’s your senses doing what they do best: turning flavour into feeling, and feeling into memories that are vivid but not always neatly labelled.
So, yes, whisky is basically a memory machine.
Why smell is the “time machine” sense
When people talk about flavour, they usually start with the tongue: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami. But the identity of flavour, “pear drop”, “campfire”, “vanilla sponge”, is mostly smell.
And smell is wired in a way that makes it unusually good at pulling you backwards through time. There’s a well-studied phenomenon sometimes called the “Proust Effect”: certain scents can trigger autobiographical memories that feel unusually real and emotional.
That’s why the smell of cardamon can feel like December or why the first sniff of cinnamon stewed apples can make your chest go a bit warm. It’s memory with mood attached.
So when a whisky’s nose reminds you of your grandma’s kitchen, your brain isn’t merely detecting aromas. It’s quietly doing something like: ‘’Oh! This is a familiar world. This is safe. This is mine.’’
Taste and smell generate emotion
Research on taste and smell consistently shows they’re tightly linked to emotional circuits and bodily responses (think: a scent making you relax, salivate or feel nostalgia without knowing why).
When something makes you feel something, your brain treats it as more worth storing. That’s why the best drams don’t just taste good. They feel like a tiny story.
So why do we forget the name of the dram we loved?
Because your brain is doing two different jobs at once:
Living the experience (“this is gorgeous, love it!”)
Encoding the details (“what’s it called, who made it, what cask, what ABV?”)
At busy environments especially, job #2 gets almost impossible.
Think about the conditions: noise, crowds, social chat, multiple drams, bright lights, a bit of time pressure, maybe a little alcohol, the fear of missing out on the next best dram. Your attention is being pulled in ten directions, which makes it harder to encode crisp “label information” (names, brands, numbers).
And here’s another twist: over time, the brain often shifts memories from detailed episodes into more general, gist-like knowledge.
So you’re not “forgetting everything”. You’re keeping the vibe, losing the barcode.
The cosy bit: why grandma’s food makes you feel warm inside
That warm-inside feeling is often nostalgia doing its thing.
Psychological research frames nostalgia as more than sentimental daydreaming. It can serve real functions: connecting us to identity, relationships, meaning and emotional comfort.
Smell and taste are powerful nostalgia cues because they’re tied to everyday life: kitchens, celebrations, people. A dram can sometimes act like a shortcut to that: ‘’This is Christmas cake. This is the living room. This is belonging.’’
That’s not “pretentious tasting notes”. That’s being human.
So what do we do with all this?
If whisky is a sensory story, and memory is an emotional, editable draft, then the easiest way to stop great drams disappearing is to give your brain a small assist: external memory.
Not a dissertation. Not perfect vocabulary. Just a few anchors while it’s fresh:
Where were you?
What did it remind you of?
One or two sensory notes (even “apple + warm” is enough)
A quick rating
Because the goal isn’t to turn whisky into homework. It’s to protect the moment from getting lost in the crowd.
And if you’ve ever walked away from tasting a dram thinking, ‘’I loved that whisky… what was it again?’, you’re exactly who we built our tasting notes experience for.
Not to overcomplicate the dram. Just to help you remember the ones that made you feel something.
