A Flavour/Colour Wheel

A fun (and perhaps useful) way into smell memory?

We’ve all seen flavour wheels for wine (here’s one from Wine Folly)

The idea is that you can smell something, and think “ah, a spice…let me check my wheel”, and jog through the spices until you nail it down.

Perhaps it works for you. My problem is that it doesn’t work for me. Black pepper and mint do not exist in the same box inside my head. Pineapple and mango don’t, either - not to mention Gooseberry and Tea.

What seems to happen to me is that colours - the actual, physical colour of the the thing that smells of what I’m looking for - seem to pop up before the name of the aroma itself. I’m there thinking “there’s something grey in here….”, more likely to find violets on my way to look for blueberries than jasmine, for example. I’m not a synaesthete - it just seems to be my filing system.

What follows, then, may be something that many readers will find completely baffling. I’d be interested to hear from you if it does - or if it doesn’t.