Did that include tongue-based tastes, too, like sweet / salty / sour / bitter / umami, or just olfactory ones? Like, if you ate an orange would it be sweet and sour at all?
Couldn’t even smell the alcohol in a bottle of whiskey.
Only symptom I had.
You're basically smelling "charred wood extract" when smelling Whiskey.
It's quite obvious how different ethanol versus isopropyl alcohol versus methanol smell (former chemist) when pure.
For instance, if I have sinus congestion so that I can't breathe through my nose, I can't experience the olfactory component of tastes. If you gave me orange juice and lemon juice, I'd be able to tell that both were sweet and sour but might not be able to distinguish between the flavors.
So when I've read about losing taste, I've wondered if this was like all the prior times when I've lost the sense of smell, or if this was something new and my taste buds would also stop working so that I couldn't experience "salty" anymore.
When people discuss taste, it's not always clear whether they mean the sensation you experience in your tongue or in your nose.