A customer smells perfumes inside special cardboard flute at Rome‘s L‘Olfattorio perfume bar October 24, 2002. L‘Olfattorio is one-of-a-kind perfume bar located just a couple of blocks from the fashionable Spanish Steps, where women and men sidle up to the counter and experiment an array of scents at no cost. PHOTO – REUTERS

ROME – It‘s cocktail hour in Rome‘s posh shopping district, but women at one trendy bar are trying a new kind of aperitif: perfume. „This is a fresh mix of mint, lemon and basil,“ the barmaid explains as a well-heeled client sniffs at the perfume sample offered in a kind of champagne glass with a spritz of scent sprayed on the cardboard rim of the flute.

Welcome to „L‘Olfattorio“, Rome‘s one-of-a-kind perfume bar a couple of blocks from the fashionable Spanish Steps, where women and men test scents for free. The bar boasts a wide range of perfumes, especially from small, exclusive French parfumeries like L‘Artisan Parfumeur, and more than 200 essences or raw ingredients used in free perfume „tasting“ courses. „We‘re trying to promote a kind of perfume culture that is founded more on smells than on brand names and marketing,“ the barmaid, Stefania Zuccotti explains.

Perfumes are displayed on steel shelves according to the kind of scent, be it fruity or flowery or like wood or leather. „This scent evokes an Indian voyage full of spices,“ Zuccotti says, offering a glass.

For those in search of a more androgynous scent, there‘s „Dzing!“ a perfume that mixes circus smells, from animal and leather to sawdust and caramel. There is one small catch. The bar, created by perfume importer Cithera, only displays the perfumes. Barflies drunk on the heavenly scents are sent away with a list of the stores at which they can buy them. Reuters