The Senses Report

Welcome to The Senses Report!  Here you will find sensory news and reviews as well as ways to engage your senses — of smell, touch, taste, wonder, place and play, just for starters — through food, wine, farming, fragrance, travel and more.

Yay!  I could not be more excited about what is taking place!

Nathan Myhrvold (former Microsoft CTO, wine lover, master chef, pictured here on the cover of Wine Enthusiast), has just come out with a new six-volume set:  Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking.

To celebrate, on Monday, March 21, at 7.30 p.m., New York Academy of Sciences’ Science & the City section will present Nathan Myhrvold in conversation with Padma Lakshmi (host of Bravo’s Top Chef) about how the latest technology and a scientific approach is changing the way we think about and cook food.

Food from the book will be sampled and a reception will follow.

You can find full details here and sign up at www.nyas.org/cuisine.

This event is co-presented by Science & the City and The Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science, both programs of the New York Academy of Sciences.

I was saddened beyond words to learn that the inimitable Ron Fonte, my first boss, had passed away right before the holidays.

Here’s but one of what I believe will be many tributes to that amazing man.

Ron lived life LARGE and was unstintingly generous with his brilliance and warmth.

Another dear friend — the late poet / philosopher / Catholic priest John O’Donohue — is fond of referencing a fellow, who said of life, on his deathbead, “I gave it a good squeeze, didn’t I?”

Ron DID !  He lived life FULL !!

I will be forever grateful for his inspiring examples and for the unfurling education and celebration of the senses I experienced when we worked together on Friends of WINE magazine and Les Amis du Vin.

I raise a good glass in his honor…and in ours !

Warmly and looking forward,

Wendy Dubit, Founder

The Senses Bureau

In honor of my first boss, Ron Fonte, and our Friends of WINE work together, I am reprising a few covers from “back in the day”…and the very rich mix of memories they stir.

All I have to do is to hear the pop of a Champagne cork (which I plan to, soon) and so many memories come rushing back….Of good work, deep play and the way I plan to “refresh my memory” today and every day.

For now, this Friends of WINE cover — taken 25 years ago and recently reshot with the doll from France that inspired it — makes me laugh, and reminds me that of all the senses, sense of play is often the most important.

When UnderWoman ran into Pretty Ugly towards the end of Toy Fair, she asked:

“Are we having fun yet?”

“Lady! Does it look like I’m having fun?”

In fact, UnderWoman was being facetious…and knows that the life of a walkabout character is not always easy.

Things can get “pretty steamy” in those suits.

“Back in the day,” UnderWoman had received a memo alerting her to the dangers of walkabout Barneys.

Apparently Barney imposters – many of whom had drinking problems and other problems – were investing in purple faux fur and renting themselves out for “kids’ parties.”

Lyons Group (now HiT Entertainment) issued a memorandum pleading with parents not to let Barneys through the “front door” if they had alcohol on their breaths and/or anything less than regulation cooling fans in their heads. (You were supposed to request that walkabout Barneys remove their “big heads” and submit to “inspection” before granting them entry, just to be sure….)

But back to Toy Fair 2010!!!!

Pretty Ugly was a little tired by the end….

But WOW, did WE have FUN!!!

Among other things:

UnderWoman’s person, Wendy Dubit (aka Wendy Do-It), at last connected with Dubit World – planetary leaders in virtual reality platforms. For years, Dubit (pronounced doo-bit) and Dubit (pronounced dub-it) had been showing up on each other’s Google searches. Now that they have met face to face, stay tuned: There may be “further “relations” between them soon!

In fact, UnderWoman and Wendy were at Toy Fair, at least in part, in search of new looks and worlds!

Some had critiqued UnderWoman’s “first look” as being “very old” indeed.

But what did they expect?

UnderWoman’s “proof-of-concept” character had cost her all of $0!

She had simply taken a picture of a caricature of herself at age 16, cut it out with an Exacto® knife, and voila!

Who wouldn’t want to look like themselves at 16? But detractors claimed that UnderWoman’s big eyes and thin thighs were of no service to Wendy or humanity. So Wendy bulked UnderWoman up a bit with Sharpie®, created some Colorforms-type styles and seasons for her, and was willing to leave it at that.

Now UnderWoman and Wendy were together at Toy Fair, scouting new products for The Senses Bureau and wanting to “ink” and “cut” deals with companies.

But Wendy and UnderWoman felt about as static as Indonesian shadow puppets in a one-dimensioanal world when they sat in on an Enagage! Circle1Network focus group with kids…and learned that most of the young participants have avatars that change their clothes and hairstyles at least a dozen times a day.

Where and how would they (UnderWoman and Wendy) begin?

At the BEGINNING, that’s where!

Fortunately, the “clocks were turned back” during a dynamic “Engaging through Narration” panel moderated by Warren Buckleitner.

Afterwards, a heartened Wendy Dubit approached him: “I feel like I know you SO WELL for someone I’ve never met!”

Warren was quick on the uptake and generous with hugs: “It’s CD-MOM! I’ve always wanted to meet CD-MOM!” (Long before she was UnderWoman, Wendy published the first-ever parenting CD-ROM, which linked religiously to Warren’s Children’s Technology Review).

It was like old timer’s day in a new-fangled universe. It was proof that, beyond all bells and whistles, the power of story will prevail!

Empowered, UnderWoman and Wendy went on to meet some amazing new multi-faceted and multi-sensory friends, among them:

Eye Can Art
HugMeez
Oum Sensory Awakening Courses
Blamtastic
Thames & Cosmos
Shidonni
Small World Toys

Sadly, old friends like Sea Monkeys, Easy-Bake Ovens and Mr. Potato Heads were not to be found on the Toy Fair floor.

But Wendy and UnderWoman will track them down with a persistence that would make T.S. Eliot proud:

We shall not cease from our exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Perhaps a trip to Hasbro headquarters is in the offing?!

Meantime, we keep circling back to Dubit World, where we are very happy, very much at home….

The Senses Bureau and friends have been hard and fast at work on the wine trails of this world…all of which seem to find their way to New York at some point.

First, a shout out to MMM Miguel Martin of Palmer Vineyards for getting us going last Spring.

We’ve been promising to write about he and his wines ever since….

Hooray!

November 19th heralded one of my happiest, hippiest Beaujolais Days, THANKS to the families Duboeuf and Deutsch, the brilliance of M. Young Communications, a gathering of great friends, Bistro Bagatelle’s fabulous food, and one of the finest Beaujolais vintages in 50 years.

I am one of thousands who eagerly await and thoroughly celebrate the Third Thursday of November — the day on which Beaujolais Nouveau is released from its homeland at 12:01 a.m., and is jetted around the world so as to be fêted in ways that are fresh, vibrant, fun.

This year’s release was especially exuberant:

The celebration sported a ’60s-style Love / Peace / RootStock theme in homage to Woodstock’s 40th Anniversary. And it kicked off a week-long program of nationwide tastings that coincide with food drives…all of which are listed at DuBoeuf Nouveau.

It also marked nearly 30 years of Beaujolais education and celebration for me.

Twenty-seven year ago, while at Friends of WINE magazine, I had stayed with the Duboeuf family in Romaneche-Thorins, and had written Profiles of Beaujolais from their premises.

This was WINE the way I loved it most — earthy, alive, fruity…and, most importantly, linked to family.

I spent every spare moment with Fabienne and Franck DuBoeuf, who are my age — comparing notes on work and life, cooking, running through fields and vineyards with assorted dogs, looking at stars. But there weren’t that many spare moments.

By 7:30 a.m., when Georges claimed that our palates were at their most awake and astute, we would taste our way through Beaujolais — visiting small family growers in the evocatively named villages of Saint-Amour, Juliènas, Chenas, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgon, Régnié, Brouilly, and Côte de Brouilly. By midnight, we would wind down from delicious dinners with the likes of Paul Bocuse and others.

Of course, it was incumbent upon us to spit if we were to make it to breakfast okay. And Georges remains my best spitting mentor to this day.

And while intervening years and careers took me temporarily away from the wine world, Beaujolais remained close to my heart always.

I just didn’t know how to put my hands on the articles I’d written back in the day….

But Voila! A recent trip to the familial storage unit yielded a treasure trove that included Profiles in Beaujolais, the tastevin I had used for tasting, and assignment letters to young wine writers like Terry Theise and Robert Parker, who were then just getting started, if you can believe….

Anyhow, I hope you will join me in refreshing these memories…and in raising a toast to Peace, Love, Flower Power and the fact that Le Beaujolais Nouveau est Arivée!!

Warmly and looking forward,

Wendy Dubit, The Senses Bureau

In Central Park, on Mother’s Day, after a solid week of rain, the lindens and lilacs are leafing and flowering out, and I am in a special state of Spring Giddiness reserved especially for this time of year.

Several Springs ago, after a particularly strenuous set of meetings, I emerged, exhausted, from the nearest subway to a scent reminiscent of….

Reminiscent of something I could not quite account for, but that was powerful and profound beyond words.

Without thinking, I followed my nose across the street and into the park, where I stood under the trees in question and reeled with joy and relief. Stress dissolved while waves of well-being and wonder washed over me. It was as if an abacus-of-the-emotions began recounting — or rather, reliving — every encounter with this fragrance from pre-verbal to most recent. Clearly, this was the tree that bloomed behind an old boyfriend’s country house. But it was also so much more.

Determined to know what and why, I returned to the park with my Smithsonian Handbook of Trees guide…and identified…American Linden! Aha! The French use linden flowers (also known as lime blossoms) to make tilleul, a soothing tea that, accompanied by a madeleine, launched Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past.

Being less prolific and more consumer-oriented, I proceeded directly to Whole Foods to purchase linden leaf tea and Provence Sante’s pure linden perfume. Subsequently, a fragrance counter sniff test at Saks yielded the info I sought: Linden is an active ingredient in Evyan’s White Shoulders, a perfume my mother and grandmother had worn from my earliest days.

And an olfactory lesson that this winetaster had always known was driven deeper home: No sense travels more quickly or directly to our memories and emotions than smell, which bypasses the reasoning part of the brain and heads straight to the limbic system.

Much more on the sense of smell, how it works, and why it’s key to happiness, health, learning and love can be found at Coming to Your Senses, in upcoming Senses Report posts, and in an olfaction chapter I co-authored with Kevin Zraly for The Complete Wine Course, to be released by Sterling this September.

For now, the linden trees are in bloom! I encourage you to stand beneath them and BREATHE. And I hope you will fill your days and nights with aromas that keep your memories and desires alive.

Warmly and looking forward,

Wendy Dubit and The Senses Bureau

Spring Giddiness

By Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.