Photo - Palazzo Mocenigo, Venice, from icamt.com
“Looks like we’re back where we started…” I said.
“Hmmm. Let me see the map. Oh, see here, it’s two bridges to the left and one canal over….” he said
“Let’s have a spritz while we sort it out.” I said.
So we sat at the little bar steps away from where we were standing, had an Aperol spritz, charted our route and then headed of to Museum Palazzo Mocenigo.
A visit to the Museum Palazzo Mocenigo was at the top of my list of things to do in Venice ever since I read about its re-opening. The museum has had an extensive renovation done in collaboration with the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and Parfums Mavive, the Venetian based fragrance company founded in 1986 by Massimo Vidal – the man who launched one of my favourite men’s scents, the gorgeous pine/amber, Pino Silvestre in 1955.
Their press release for the museum said:
“The exciting new layout concludes with an extraordinary new display dedicated to the history of perfumes and essences…. stressing its deep links with the city of Venice and aimed at revealing and promoting a thousand-year-old vocation that has Italy and Venice in particular as being among the main centres of the world’s perfumery tradition.”
Sold!
The perfume installation was one of the best I have ever experienced with informative videos, seminars and examples of raw materials to see and smell. Coinciding with the opening of the museum was the launch of a new fragrance line called the ‘Murano Collection’, from Mavive’s niche fragrance line The Merchant of Venice.
The name of the house is taken from the title of Shakespeare’s play, which was written around 1596 and whose title character is a wealthy Venetian merchant named Antonio - not the Shylock, the Jewish moneylender – and recalls a time when Venice was the centre of trade with the East, when exotic spices, silks foods and incense came through its ports.
According to the Mavive website, the six eau de parfums in Murano Collection, so named because the bottles are based on designs from master glass blowers of Murano, speaks about the long journeys from the fascinating cities of the Orient to the enchantment of Venice, the main destination of the ancient Mediterranean routes. The spices, the aromas, and the rare essences were expertly selected by the Merchant from among those that were most aspired and precious. The masterly expertise of the time-honoured Venetian traditions turns an enchanted journey into a dream.
Well, to be in Venice sniffing six swooners is pretty much my idea of a dream, walking away with a few bottles was a dream come true. One of those bottles was Asian Inspirations.
It opens with a tart citrus-sweet note of bitter orange and green, aromatic sage. I love the way the fruitiness of the orange plays off the peppery sage perfectly giving the opening a fresh, herbal depth. But this is just the start, there is much more to come. The fresh herbal depth sets up a note vetiver at the heart bringing out its grassy, rooty, woody goodness that just lingers until white cedar adds more woodiness. Benzoin at the base echoes the resinous aspect of the white cedar while adding a gentle hint of vanilla sweetness.
The drydown is dry, aromatic and deliciously green. So well executed that I can smell all the notes, especially the vetiver, at the drydown but they flow together, work together complementing one another other to create a gorgeous sillage.
Asian Inspirations is a unisex fragrance. It has enough heft to be worn by a man, but on a woman that heft reads as cultivated.
After our visit to the museum we sat down for another Aperol spritz, discussed what we saw, what we liked and what we would want to see again. Another spritz and we decided the Museum Palazzo Mocenigo was worth a second visit, especially now that we knew how to get there.
Asian Inspirations is listed in our Decant Store. Decants are $5.00 for 1 ml.