What Inspired Taste of Love

Taste of Love started in Hong Kong, in a bar called Hollywell’s, with a cocktail that felt a little too accurate. Not the version you see in movies, but the one you experience in real life, distilled into one sip at a time.

The team there built it around the way they’d experienced love. It begins sweet. Then it turns spicy, that full-body infatuation where everything feels brighter and slightly unreal. After that comes sour, the confusing stretch where you can feel the mood shift but can’t quite name why. And finally it lands bitter, because most of their relationships, as they put it so casually, ended that way.

What stayed with me wasn’t just the order of flavors, but the truth behind it. When all those notes met in one glass, they didn’t cancel each other out. The drink tasted layered, distinct, complete. Like the point wasn’t to isolate one “good” note and erase the rest. The point was that the whole mix is what makes it real.

That feeling followed us home. Love isn’t one neatly packaged experience. It’s a blend that changes as you move through it, and somehow it still becomes yours.

My Own Love History

If I’m being honest, I haven’t really had luck finding sustained sweetness either.

My first relationship was on and off for four years. First love, first trips, first routines, first time learning what it means to grow up alongside someone else. We went from college students to adults together. I yearned for stability, but if I’m honest, I also secretly thrived in the chaos. Looking back, that relationship felt like the culmination of everything at once: tenderness and uncertainty, comfort and friction, the kind of love that teaches you by overwhelming you.

The second relationship ended differently, but it still ended with frustration, during a time when we both needed to focus on ourselves and had nothing left to give. Not because there wasn’t care, but because care alone doesn’t always carry something across the finish line.

I used to file these under endings. Now I see them as reference points. Each memory taught me something about who I am in love, what I reach for, what I tolerate, what I mistake for passion, what I actually need. In that way, love becomes a quiet kind of self-discovery, whether you asked for it or not.

What Taste of Love Is About

Taste of Love is our way of telling the truth about love.

Not the polished version commercials sell. Not the tidy narrative where every moment is soft lighting and perfect timing. Real love is multi-faceted. It has highs and lows. It changes shape mid-sentence. It surprises you with joy and then asks you to sit with discomfort.

And even when it doesn’t last, it still leaves you with something. A clearer sense of self. A sharper sense of what matters. A memory that stays.

This collection is a reminder that love is rarely one flavor. It’s the overlap. The aftertaste. The full experience.

Why Hanhan Belongs in This Story

Hanhan, as a character, is a reflection of our softer inner self.

That soft, quiet voice that keeps looking for the good parts in life, even when louder voices are pulling attention elsewhere. The part that gets distracted, spirals a little, tries to be fine, then tries again. Not perfect, but always honest.

And more than anything, Hanhan is a reminder to notice what actually becomes a life.

Not grand gestures. The small moments that build your memories.

The Collection, Flavor by Flavor

Sweet: “For You”

Hanhan is holding a carefully packaged donut, made for a crush.

Donuts are one of Hanhan’s favorite foods, a small happy sugary rush. Sweet love feels like that. You find something that makes you happy and your first instinct is to share it. Not to impress, not to prove anything. Just: I want you to have this too.

“For You” captures that budding sweetness where you can’t help but offer the best parts of your world to someone else.

Sour: “Boyfriend”

“Boyfriend” is Hanhan holding a handmade teddy bear called boyfriend.

After being disappointed enough times, Hanhan stops searching for the perfect person and decides to create one instead. This piece came from that familiar pressure to find “the one,” the spiral of dating that starts to feel like being graded against a standard you never agreed to.

Then the shift happens. Attention returns inward. Approval stops being the goal. In a sense, the teddy is also Hanhan, a reminder that the missing piece to the puzzle is not always someone else.

Sour isn’t “bad.” Sour is longing and uncertainty, but also clarity. The moment the chase ends and self-respect begins.

Spicy: “In Love”

“In Love” captures the peak of infatuation.

Hanhan is deep in love with the Hanhan of Hanhan’s dreams. The inspiration comes from the dramatic freeze frame of romantic dramas, when the world suddenly slows down and everything becomes intensely specific. Roses, pink bubbles, time stopping, the brain being completely unreasonable for a moment.

Some people call that cheesy. Spicy doesn’t mind. Spicy is the essence of love, at least one part of it.

Spicy is the moment when the world becomes just you and your person, and you let it happen.

Bitter: “I’m Fine”

“I’m Fine” is a still of heartbreak, the kind that looks calm from far away.

Hanhan is holding a broken heart that says “I’m fine,” even when it clearly isn’t. Tears pooling. A wilted flower on top. The familiar posture of trying to hold a strong front because that’s what people do sometimes, keep going while everything inside feels tender.

Bitter isn’t there to romanticize pain. Bitter is there to tell the truth. Sometimes love ends. Sometimes it ends in a way you didn’t choose. Sometimes all that’s possible is letting the sorrow exist for a little, not to stay there forever, but to stop pretending nothing happened.

Bitter makes room for what is real.

Umami: “Cupid” (Secret Edition)

“Cupid” is the secret edition.

Hanhan is morphed into a cupid, arrow ready. It’s the lingering note at the end of the series, not a guarantee, but a wish: that serendipity still exists, that timing can still surprise you, that love can still find you when you least expect it.

Umami is the aftertaste. The thing that stays.

A note on Hanhan and Luke (Hanhan’s Husband)

Hanhan met Luke at an art fair, when he walked up and bought a postcard from her. He’s been a day-one supporter, the first person she shows when she finishes a new piece, the steady witness to her world.

She describes their love story as a peaceful flowing creek, not a dramatic wave. No big spectacle. Just a consistent, gentle stream moving forward.

And I love that, because it mirrors what this collection is really trying to say.

Love is not always fireworks. Sometimes it’s a small daily proof. A shared snack. A message sent at the right moment. A quiet reminder that you’re not alone.

Taste of Love is for the people who have felt every flavor, and still choose to keep tasting.