This is a fascinating thread! I smell many things this way (flowers, crushed herbs, food, perfume, wine—though swirling is less prone to knocking the glass over, ahem).
Perhaps it’s just my (less sensitive?) nose but I find a great difference in the intensity of the aroma when just sniffing over or near something versus pushing the air toward my nose. When I don’t do the air-push thing, it’s as if I’m only receiving a fraction of the complexity and it’s quite frustrating, almost like eating with a stuffed up nose. After all, isn’t taste something like 80% smell?
I’d never even considered that it could be offensive or performative… Oh well.
