AbdesSalaam Perfume Course – Part II: Getting There, The Germano Reale, Meeting Salaam & Coriano Food

Photo: my own.

Photo: my own.

Giant sunflowers filled the field, their yellow faces turned down to hide against the glare of the sun that dominated the cornflower blue sky. The next field over was filled with golden hay, freshly harvested and rolled into enormous, round bales that dotted the landscape for several miles. Small grapes hung from trees in another field, while the distant landscape was a gentle, rolling wave of green hills adorned with tall, ancient cypresses, elegantly pruned into long columns and standing proudly like Roman centurions guarding the land.

Coriano. Source: spezio.it

Coriano. Source: spezio.it

This was Coriano‘s “Agriturismo” commune, the countryside about 15 to 20 minutes outside the busy seaside resort of Rimini on Italy’s central coast. As I stared at the view from my taxi window, I thought of how the scene had been repeated from the trains I’d just taken from Rome and from Bologna. Well, minus the enormous fields of sunflowers that would have made Van Gogh utterly ecstatic. Italy was in full bloom, its countryside lush and slowly getting ready for harvesting. It made me all the more eager to get to my destination, to harvest my own crops of an olfactory nature, and to begin the perfume course that I’d journeyed so far to take.

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La Via del Profumo & A Summer Perfume Course in Italy

Italy in summertime! High above Rimini on the Adriatic coast, the hills are alive with the sound of perfume vials clinking, fragrance essences being blended in beakers, and the teachings of AbdesSalaam Attar (Dominique Dubrana) of La Via del Profumo. That is the essence of a press release that I thought I would share with you, as it’s a great opportunity to learn from one of the masters of natural perfumery. Plus, did I mention Italy in summertime?

Monte Columbo, Rimini, Italy. Source: bimbirimini.it

Monte Colombo, Rimini, Italy. Source: bimbirimini.it

For those of you unfamiliar with the name, AbdesSalaam Attar is an Italian and a Sufi convert whose all-natural creations are some of Luca Turin‘s favorites, several of which have received Five Star reviews. The New York Times calls him “a genius of sorts” and “a Saracen Willy Wonka” in an article that also talks briefly about his “wonderful olfactorium.”

That is what you can experience, if you take his mini perfume course over a six-day period this June. It will take place in Monte Colombo, which seems to be the hillside or more countryside part of the ancient Roman town of Rimini, located in the gorgeous Emilia-Romagna region of Italy on the Adriatic coast.

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