If you should have visited this page during the past weeks in expectation of a new article, you unfortunately had to search in vain for such. The reason for this is unfortunately an unpleasant one: I have become infected with the corona virus. As a father of small children, one hardly has a chance to protect oneself effectively in this matter in the long run – and that’s exactly how it turned out. The course was fortunately (and certainly also thanks to the vaccination protection) a mild one, nevertheless I had to fight with high fever. And that for almost 2 weeks (an experience I last had as a child). But probably the biggest and most worrying phenomenon against the background of what I am doing here is another: the loss of sense of smell and taste.
In fact, for the first week of the infection, I tasted or smelled almost nothing – a circumstance that is truly scary in this form. Then there has been a slight improvement, but still far from normal. It will come as little surprise that I have not consumed any alcohol during this time, but yesterday I decided to put my sense of smell and taste to the test: I poured myself some Oaxaca Mezcal and a Laphroaig and wanted to find out in this way how bad the taste and smell really is. The result was absolutely devastating: with the mezcal, I could smell virtually no smoke, and taste-wise, the experience was reminiscent of a strangely distilled vodka. The Laphroaig, on the other hand, was also a shadow of its former self on the nose, the closest thing I perceived reminded me of lamp oil. Then on the tongue it was a completely indefinable experience of metallic and slightly spicy notes, while lacking any characteristic intensity or depth. There was just so much missing that it really scared me.
Well – and this is it now: the status quo. For a spirits and cocktail blogger, this is indeed a huge pile of sh**.
So what can I do about it? Well, I still have a few tasting notes and already started articles from before the infection that I’ll be bringing forward over the next few weeks for now. And meanwhile, I’m just hoping for improvement. What else am I going to do?
