How I Became a Perfumer Podcast

№12 – Becoming a Top-Level Flavorist with Andrea Albertino

• Tanya Mironova • Season 1 • Episode 12

Share episode

Welcome back to our podcast! Today, we're thrilled to sit down with Andrea Albertino, who is not only a senior flavorist at Esarom in Austria but also the Honorary President of the British Society of Flavorists. Andrea brings a blend of professional expertise and personal passion (fruit, you will understand later) to our discussion. 

Check Out These Links for More:

Ever dreamt about going to space? Connect with Tanya!

• https://www.instagram.com/neparfumer/
• https://www.coachmironova.com/


I think the perfumery world is a little bit more known because everybody knows that perfumes exist. So because everybody uses perfumes somehow or deodorants or shampoo or whatever. And from flavors is a little bit different because everybody uses flavors because pretty much we have to eat somehow. But only a few people know that actually what we eat is most of the time flavored. oh Hi and welcome to How I Became a Perfumer or in today's case a Flavorist podcast. In each episode we're exploring the different roles in the flavor and fragrance industry as well as talk to founders of the independent projects. My name is Tanya Mironova. I'm a career coach dedicated to helping you sniff out the best career opportunities or inspiring you to create your own businesses. Today on our podcast, we are thrilled to have Andrea Albertino with us. Andrea is a senior flavorist at EzArom, based in Austria. Andrea also serves as the honorary president of the British Society of Flavorists. Outside of his professional life, Andrea is a passionate home brewer and photographer. Although he jokes about having no free time, he is also a devoted father with a curious mind. So let's dive into the world of flavors with Andrea. Thank you very much. Best presentation ever, ever, no, mean, thank you for this opportunity. It is for me, it's fun. So let's put it that way. am having fun about what I'm doing every day, day to day job. I'm having fun and I'm having fun doing this because it's just talking about what you do. And As you mentioned, I'm having fun being part of my company and being part of the British Society of Laborists. So if you have fun, you just do it without pressure. I mean, the best career episode ever. mean, I'm just having fun. Like, what do you do? Like, what's your daily duties? Just having fun. All right. So maybe, Andrea, could you start a little bit by sharing initially why you decided, was it even a conscious decision, join the world of flavor science? Yeah, so I cannot answer why because I didn't decide that was not my decision. And that's probably like the same story of many other flavorists because flavorists are not really known in the, the, maybe in the food industry, but they are not known at definitely at the university level, unless you attend a specific course where somebody tells you about the existence of flavors. Therefore I can say I was quite lucky to get into this industry and it happened because I finished my PhD in 2010. I did a few months of uh postdoc. I was looking around, I mean, what the story was in terms of, I didn't really want to go ahead with the university career because I'm a person that I like to touch, I like to see a final product, you know, where If you are in the university, which is great. mean, you know, that's fantastic. It's just like you come up with one gram of product or one milligram of product after months of work and said, okay, what do you do with that? I don't know, because you cannot produce it. So it will never go out on the market. And unless you create something extraordinary, you would never see your product apart on a scientific paper. That was my thinking process. And they said, okay, let's have a look around because I want to join an industry. And the opportunity came because my PhD advisor was uh in contact with a senior flavorist in a flavor company in Italy. And they were talking and I said, okay, I have this person who could be interesting for you as a new employee. So I had an interview. First time I stepped into this. flavor lab I said my goodness what is this because I have a PhD in chemistry so I know you know flasks and vessels and all this glassware but I didn't expect that so I didn't expect to see hundreds or thousands of little bottles with chemicals on top and something that was actually smelling or something or oils so on so there was completely different world even though I have experience in chemistry so I studied chemistry me that was something completely new and I said god what is this yeah I started with an internship and then things were I mean started to learn because this is something that you would not learn in the university at all unless you do some specific courses but there are probably a few in the world one is in grass is hip cut but there are really really really few courses Yeah, internal schools has been already... It's difficult to know about this, the existence of this industry before uh joining a company. And that's where it started. Like I said, okay, let's have a look. I kind of liked it, you know, it was just fun to create something different pretty much every day, because it's not like doing something quality control where you always analyze the same thing every day. It depends on the customer request. It depends on maybe a compliant, maybe a complaint, maybe a, you know, a new customer. Everything is actually different every day. So that's why I like. I like, sorry that I interrupted, but when you mentioned internship after a PhD, for many people it sounds like, well, I've already decided that I devote my life to a PhD, to academia, to all that kind of stuff, you know, like many people don't have courage to go through some other industries after that, and you just navigated your life in a way that you joined the industry. At least that was the situation in Italy 10 years ago or like 14 years ago because I don't know if things changed, but it's extremely difficult to have a career in the university in terms of, okay, you do your PhD, fine, and you spend a lot of years as a researcher and then before becoming a professor or before becoming a a full-time employee at the university really takes a lot of time and there are not so many spots available. Therefore, I appreciate people sticking to the university, but I think it's more brave to stay at the university and to really pursue the scientific career because, I found it at that time really frustrating to not to have the sure possibility to... have a career there. So that's why I said, okay, I want to jump into the industry where most likely I will have more opportunities. Well, you've mentioned that when you joined the company, you saw that there are a lot of bottles with different Esminano flavors. And maybe you remember what applications were you offered to work with in your first days. Absolutely. I do remember that the first thing I did was for confectionery, for chewing gum. I spent a little bit of time, I'd say maybe a couple of years, not working on proper flavor formulations. So not really putting one, two, three, four, five, six, seven together and coming up with a flavor, but I spent uh time working on flavor encapsulation. So flavor encapsulation means that the flavors themselves are not really used as such, but they have to be vehiculated through a carrier. Pick for different reasons. Could be uh for masking, could be for uh visual effect. It could be for a different texture that you have to come up with in the final application. So I used to work on flavor encapsulations for chewing gum. And I do remember I was compounding flavors, like getting to know the raw materials, but not really putting my knowledge in them because I didn't really have flavor knowledge. So was learning, okay, etalbutyryl smells like this, orange oil smells like this, but I was not free in term of formulating, but I was using these flavors and I developed some encapsulated flavors mainly for chewing them. Did you like it? Did you like the results? Yeah, because the product that we came up with was pretty much for the texture. So it was fun to see how the flavor was delivered in the final application. So for example, working on small particles that are bitten by the consumers. So yeah, the flavor release the moment you bite into these products. So it was really fun to see. Instead of having the flavor which is uniformly spread into the application, you have some spots that are like bursting into flavor. And after these two years working with chewing gum and also learning flavors, what was the next challenge in your career? I think the next challenge was like a life challenge because the company I used to work with which is Carey an Irish company believe that huge, right? They are pretty big. they pretty big. They do a lot of things from flavor to milk products and the multi-fire and inclusions and so on. it's really big. em The flavor I used to work with in Italy was part of the Cary Group. And because of let's say company decision, they decide to close the site where... I used to work with and that was the challenge because the opportunity was to move to Ireland in the headquarter of the company. And that's, I think that was, that was the challenge more than like a job challenge. was like completely different way of living. So that's why we decided to move with my future wife, let's say at the time, also joined the company in, Ireland. And that's, that was the challenge. that was 2013, end of 2013. We moved there and that's where I officially started the flavorist career because I was told, okay, we're not working on this process anymore. We are developing flavors. And at the time I said, okay, but I'm having fun doing this. I don't want to be a flavorist because I like the technology. I like this different. equipment that I'm using. So, but they said, okay, let's try. And that's where I started as I think junior flavorist, because the flavorist career starts with flavorist trainee. That's the beginning where you just like compound flavors. You try to learn, you know, what the chemicals smell like and so on. Then you become a junior flavorist, then you become a senior flavorist, then you become a flavorist, then you become a junior, senior flavorist and so on. So there are different steps according to your personal experience. I think I joined as a junior flavorist and yeah, I started to work on flavors, like really compounding flavors from the scratch, matching, creating, developing for different application, mainly for beverage because overall the beverage industry in terms of flavors is bigger than the flavor industry for other application because we drink more than what we eat. Therefore, the business is much weaker for the beverage industry. So that's also interesting. It is simple mathematical calculation. If you look in a supermarket, there are a lot of different drinks. Also, there are a lot of different flavored foods, but in proportion, the drink is like what you consume much more. But looking back, could we say that like really you didn't plan to become a flavorist, like you hadn't planned to become a flavorist. um Like you hadn't planned to move anywhere probably, or at least you haven't considered it, at least maybe not Ireland from Italy. I mean, the weather is totally different and you have to adapt a lot. And all these things just started happening to you and well, technically you in a good way surrendered to them. You just do it. mean, it's not that I didn't really have any other options, but I said, yeah, let's do it. You know, I was just by any chance, I visited Ireland, I think the year before we moved there without knowing about, you know, the, the move. Uh, but yeah, I enjoyed it, you know, I enjoyed it. And I think if I talk specifically about Ireland and you know, that it. people up there are just amazing. You feel like home in 30 seconds because they are so friendly and so welcoming. so it's very easy to find friends and you feel like home very, very, very quickly. When we moved there, the new facility that the company put up was completely new and everybody was in the same boat. pretty much. Everybody moving from different countries to this new place. So that made things quite easy because it was just, we were just friends from the beginning because no family, other friends outside the company. So it was very, very easy to make bonds with colleagues, new colleagues coming from all over the world. Did you get a good mentor at the beginning or you were first like learning by yourself and then some other colleagues helped you? think it's a mixture of both. It's a mixture of both. You need somebody like a good mentor. You need somebody next to you who has the passion for the job and can transmit the passion onto you. But at the same time, you are alone on your project. Therefore, once you have the passion, once you built a little bit of knowledge, I think it's pretty much all new. That's where you develop your knowledge, you develop your ability, your fantasy to put things together. So I think it's a mixture of both. And there is also one thing that I definitely remember and this is BSF related, even though at the time I was not really aware of the systems, pretty much of the BSF or like the importance of the British Society of Flavorists. I joined the Reading Flavorists course in 2014. I think it was 14 in Reading in the UK. is a course that is organized every year in May for three weeks by the University of Reading and the British Society of Flavorists. I joined in 2014 where I spent three weeks with other people from other industries and with senior and retired flavorists from, you know, the industry. So people who spend 30, 40 years in compounding flavors and working on flavor project and teaching you about that. So that was really like uh an incredible motivation for me, especially when I came back as I felt full of motivation from this point of view. That's super cool. It is absolutely great. So I recommend it to any junior or flavorist trainee to join this course. I think there are eight to 10 students every year. So it's quite small because it's quite a high quality. So the students are followed like nearly one by one, you know, in this journey. We will definitely leave a link to this course. How much time did you spend drinking beer at work? I mean our listeners might think that I'm joking, but it's actually what the flavorist job is about if you work on this application, but you don't drink it usually. Look, I don't drink. I taste. In terms of beer, I mean, I love beer. I enjoy beer. I try not to drink the same beer twice in my life. This is, mean, exaggeration, but let's say I like to drink different things. So I would never go to the supermarket and buy. You are in Denmark, so I would never buy a Carlsberg, like a standard lager thing. I mean, this is for me not interesting, you know? I would try to go for a Micaelaer, for example. I don't drink alcohol so I don't know what you all... Nothing about it. No, this is like the best beer that I drank when I was in Copenhagen. uh Not really a small brewery, but I think it got bigger, but I love that one. So I would go for local beers, something too easy on what I want to try. And at work, yeah, we do develop flavors for different beverages, alcoholic beverages as well. But yeah, you try to limit. This is what you are paid for. So you have to taste things, you know, energy drinks and stuff that are packed with, you know, sugars and not talking about this is the healthy part of it. I don't want to touch this topic, but you taste a lot of things that I would probably not buy in the supermarket. And so you try to limit yourself. in the amount of what you taste and at the same time you try to limit yourself outside, you know, work. So outside work, I try not to taste many different things because I already did my bit, you know, at work. Maybe it also motivates you to oh create the best version so to be able to taste this one. Yeah, I mean, this is, this is always a challenge. You know, you try to do the, we not putting yourself a limit. Yeah. But, I don't like when somebody say, don't like this. I don't think there is something that you like or you don't like it. Just if it is new, maybe you would not drink it again or you would not bite again. Fine. Or When you, it's all about the concentration, even the raw materials. Okay. There are some raw materials that you would probably say they smell bad, but I don't think there is something that smells bad or good. Everything depends on the, on the concentration. know, if you have a pure isobutal methoxy pyrosine, which is the bell pepper pyrosine, would be like something that sticks on you for the rest of your life. And that's like impossible to get rid of. But if you have it around. at the right concentration you say okay this is a nice maybe pomegranate earthy touch to your flavor so yeah heard that there are some jokes about, like, because you mentioned it and I remembered uh how you could prank your colleague with these raw materials. I mean, yeah, but look at this guy. I mean, of course you can. Of course you can. You can also do it to your neighbors maybe if your neighbors don't know that you work on this stuff. it would be really, really, really difficult to get rid of this stuff. You have to change a company at least if it's a company or a house, if it's your neighbor. How many years did it take for you to become a senior flavorist? Did you become a senior working at Cary or you already changed the company by that moment? So there are some pretty much like after two years of being a trainee, you become a junior roughly. maybe, I think it's five years of junior, you become a flavorist. This is not black and white. It depends on the company. It depends on the project, depends on your wins and so on. And then after a few years of flavor, let's say, you become a senior. And that's, I think you need at least between 10 and 12 year experience on the bench to say, okay, I think I'm ready to be a senior flavorist. And the company has to, you know, approve your journey and your title. became- Pretty long. It is, yeah, but you should have knowledge of let's say 2000, raw materials all together. So it doesn't really mean that I know them all because every time you smell something, you come up with something. Okay. I never thought that this, you know, ether butyrate would smell a little bit rummy, but you should have at least an idea of all. If you have formulation, you should know exactly what to increase, what to decrease if you, if you see the components and yeah it takes time because there are really really really a lot and even like these are chemicals and then you have the preparations and then orange oil is orange oil but if it's orange oil from another supplier it's an orange oil which is different from the first one that you are using so yeah it is a never-ending story It's just interesting because, you know, in some industries it seems if you get enough theoretical education and not too many even maybe years of experience but you did have some major cases of doing something, you could become a senior someone quite easy, I would say, or just faster. And here, because actually you have to be able to imagine every situation with all these components, all that. There is one thing here that maybe makes the frivolous job and career not so exciting at the beginning. And the reason is it takes time. I think most of the people right now, like students out of the university would like to be, as you said, senior sales account manager, whatever it is in one year or so. Whereas you cannot do that. You need years and years. So that's why it might come across not so exciting at the beginning because you really need to spend time on the bench and learning, maybe reading scientific papers and failing a lot of time because out of, I don't know, 100 projects that you do for customers, maybe 10, 20 if you're good, will be a success. And that can be like frustrating at the beginning for a young person just out of the university wants to become immediately like a CEO. Andrea, at what point of your career did you start mentoring? I think starting when I was in Ireland, it was like a quite big group at the time. We're up to eight, nine flavorists and the senior flavor was pretty much like managing the group. not really mentoring the single uh flavorists, but that was fine. It was a big group. It was just not possible. So I think at the time it's where not... I I started mentoring other uh Fleetwood, but we were kind of supporting each other. That was really, really cool. And I think same thing is happening here in Azeron because we have like a group which has like pretty much the same level of experience, kind of. So we are supporting uh each other. Yeah. I never had like a person like a trainee all by myself that I could start from the beginning. but I think we will learn from each other, like somebody with a little bit more experience, somebody with a bit less and try to leverage these differences and learning more. Seems like at the British Society of Flavrists you do pretty the same thing. I mean you try to exchange your knowledge with each other and support each other's journey or what or maybe other main functions you could name. Three years ago, kind of, I joined the British Society of Flavors during the pandemic because I saw that there were a lot of interesting online webinars where I could learn. And when I joined, I said, okay, I think I like that. I like the organization of these webinars. So just to make it short, the British Society of Flavorists is uh trying to spread the word of uh flavors in terms of legislation, terms of trends, terms of scientific results and so on. So we are organizing online and in present events. We have a podcast where we are interviewing people like star of the flavor industry. We have a magazine. we have the British Society of Flavorist Council is as like or 15 members. So everybody has his own role. We have a website, we are present on LinkedIn and socials and so on. So through these different channels, we are just trying to, yeah, extend a little bit the knowledge of the flavors without getting too much into the IP because this is just not possible, but motivating. new, like young people who getting into this new and fascinating world. Yeah, I see. Well, that's pretty cool. um I wanted just to ask one question. Why, I don't know, like, why is it the British society of, why it was Britain who... You should ask the people who put the society together in 1970. So this is the, this one that the British set of flavors was founded. yeah, 1970 and was, was founded in, in, the UK. And I think till at least 2010 and so on. It was mainly mainly uh UK based. So people used to to meet on a regular base in person in the UK. But especially, especially with the pandemic, that was, I think it was like an opportunity for the BASF to expand the reach definitely outside the UK, Europe and around the world, because now we have members in the US, in India, in China. because now the council is not meeting every month in a pub in London. That's just not possible. We just have all our meetings online and that's why... Also the president is just right now in Vienna, So this is, I think that's probably the first time that the president is not either British or not like based in the UK and so on. So, I mean, for me, it was like a huge honor to be elected the president, but I'm putting a lot of effort and enthusiasm in doing that. So we, so the name, yeah, the name is British, but the society is pretty much based around the world and we'll We organized an event last year on coffee in Italy. We are organizing an event on chocolate in October in Brussels in Belgium. We'll be presenting at FlavorCon in New Jersey in uh October organized by Jenna and Perfumer and Flavorist Magazine and so on. think you know her. yeah, we are. reaching different organizations. We were present in London in February with British Society of Perfumers where we had uh the event called Bringing the Sciences Together. So yeah, just in a nutshell, know, otherwise I could continue for an hour and then people would get bored. I was just wondering what type of event could you organize in Scandinavia? Would it be cinnamon buns? mean like no, pastry flavor events or... I if you talk about Denmark, we could talk about the revolution of cuisine. I absolutely love the food in Denmark when I visited Copenhagen. I mean, the Norma is in Copenhagen. It's not anywhere else in the world. For our listeners, this is the restaurant which was... I mean, guess the chef was the first ever person who was on the cover of The Time. Just because it has been the best restaurant in the world for a few years in a row and out of nowhere because many people make jokes about the Danish cuisine which is about potato and smelk asprøvd. It's murder brother. I love it. Have a book about murder broad uh That's all right. But yeah, the evolution of the Danish cuisine is an interesting one. Yeah. If I thought about having something in the Nordics, I would go with molecular cuisine or something like, yeah, revolutionary ingredients in the modern cuisine. would be the title. Super cool. I mean, maybe you will think about it. Why not? Yeah, why not? how do you see the role of a playwright evolve in maybe in the next 5 to 10 years. So now everybody's talking about artificial intelligence, you know, so it seems that this, let's call it technology or tool or whatever it is will take over. But I still think that the human touch is difficult to be replaced. I think you can use machines if you want to compound flavors, fine. You can use machine if you want to find mistakes. But when it comes to the sensibility of human beings, think machines cannot really take over. So the flavor that you compound can be a combination of your moment, your history, your childhood, and this is something that cannot be replaced by any means. I think artificial intelligence. will be a very useful tool for flavories and that's why you should leverage it. But I think that the role of flavories will probably be helped by that, but it will be hopefully, you know, consistent and similar to what it is at the moment, you know, with the fantasy, the passion, with the knowledge of the raw materials. All right, well, thank you. Now there will be a few more Blitz questions. A surefire way to get your day off to a good start. Running 10 kilometers. But I don't have the time to do it. uh I hope it doesn't mean that you don't have enough good days. I think like physical exercise or movement, I think it would be the best way to clear up your mind and have a brilliant start of the day. Your signature dish or maybe drink to cook for friends. I have sourdough bread, or sourdough pizza, which is actually at the moment on my kitchen counter ready to be baked as soon as we finish and as soon as my wife and my son are back. I like it. I really like it and talking to you That's actually true because I have four pizza in the kitchen and I have to make the toppings and yeah so yeah it's true I mean is it the signature dish? I'm not sure but I don't know I hope it turns out good. I'll send you a picture if it's good. Alright, in your opinion, what is the most underrated flavor that most people should know about? because I mean, we are in the Western world. Everybody drinks coffee. Fine. Everybody likes coffee. I also like coffee. But I think tea is a little bit underrated in the Western world. So I just had a green tea right now when I was talking to you. But it's not that popular and it's not, even though maybe a little bit more recently, but it's not a flavor that somebody would go for straight away. Whereas... it's a coffee chocolate yeah I totally agree and I think that there are many more applications when it comes to the tea flavor. Yeah, and that can be different in terms of like roasting and know the variety and so on but I think we don't know that much here in the West. oh I like it. This is also very new thing to me to think about but totally agree. If you could only work with one flavor for the rest of your life, what would that be? Okay, so I choose passion fruit because I can put together a lot of components, for example, sulfur components, lactones, esters, terpenes, citrus oils, maybe also like some powders, let's say vanilla, a little touch. So I think tropical passion fruit in general can cover like a not the whole pallet of raw materials but a good amount of them. Where if I choose let's say vanilla I have two or three and stuff like yeah. If I choose coffee yeah I have a lot but I don't have all the or like in a tiny amount all the fruity parts and so on the floral yeah floral too in the passion fruit so yeah. Very cool. I love to see the way you think about it because you chose the variety of options. So maybe passion fruit is not the thing you just like really love. mean, but I love passion fruit to be honest. But the fact that you could play around. No, you can take it apart and you can really see, this is made up of one, two, three, four, five, six different group of raw materials. So that's why if I use this one, I can build up many other more. entertain yourself longer, I would say. And my last question. What piece of advice would you give someone just starting out in the flavor industry today? uh just be curious just be uh have fantasy i think you know being a flavorist is a pretty much like either somebody says like a musician somebody says like a painter it doesn't matter but you have so many different possibilities of having fun and i think that's that's a privilege you know you should thrive from the mistakes and failures and then realize that this is a privilege. And the same would be for a perfumer, I think, you know, this is just an enormous privilege to be there, even though it could be difficult and tough at the beginning. Super cool. Well, thank you, Andrea, for sharing your expertise. We will leave all the links in the description box, but I believe, well, in some time we need to have you again here. Thank you very much. I really hope it was not too boring for you or for the listeners, but I enjoyed it. So yeah, thank you so much. Thank you, likewise. you

People on this episode

Head Shot

Tanya Mironova

Host