Vranjes Firenze Fico Aromatico: The Fig Tree Refuses to Behave.

There are easier ways to make something smell Italian.

Lemon. Cypress. Sun-warmed stone. Perhaps a little leather for anyone who has recently discovered Il Postino and would like the room to know about it.

Fico Aromatico, the first chapter of Vranjes Firenze’s new Florentia collection, takes a less obedient route.

Its Tuscany is green, dusty and slightly unruly: Tomato leaf, green mandarin, fig pulp, orange blossom, cedarwood, guaiac wood and oakmoss. Less postcard, more the particular afternoon you remember without being entirely sure why.

Heat sits in the walls. Tomato vines have escaped whatever arrangement they were originally given. The earth is dry. A fig tree is carrying more fruit than seems reasonable. Underneath it, the air is cooler and the ground holds the last trace of moisture.

That is where Fico Aromatico begins.

Florentia, the Latin name associated with Florence, carries the idea of flourishing. Appropriate enough for a city that has always been rather promiscuous with disciplines. Art borrowed from science; architecture from mathematics; commerce paid for beauty. Florence has never been particularly interested in keeping things in their proper departments.

Neither is this fragrance.

The opening belongs to the garden.

A taste of Tuscany, minus the postcard. Fico Aromatico has arrived with its own agenda.

Tomato leaf is the giveaway. We know the fruit intimately; its leaves are another matter. Rub one between your fingers and there is something green, bitter, sappy and faintly metallic about it, almost medicinal. For a moment, the kitchen disappears. You are standing beside the plant.

Green mandarin brings a cooler flash of citrus. Then the fig arrives: Soft, warm and fleshy, closer to fruit split open in the heat than anything resembling fig syrup. Orange blossom gives it lift without making it sugary.

The fig is allowed to remain a fig.

That restraint matters. The greenery stays present, so the fruit never quite loses its branch.

Cedarwood and guaiac bring dryness and grain. Oakmoss draws everything down into earth and shade. The fragrance begins to feel less like a list of ingredients and more like somewhere you could actually stand.

Our conversation with Cristina Rebollini, Vranjes Firenze’s Export Manager, made the idea more intriguing. We began talking about fragrance and found ourselves discussing something much more instinctive: The peculiar education of the nose.

Smell happens before analysis. Then, if you become interested, you start noticing things you previously couldn't name. Green has gradations. Wood has temperature. Floral notes can be airy, creamy, powdery, even slightly bitter. One scent changes another. Layering becomes a form of experimentation: A little more of this, something darker underneath, a different atmosphere by evening.

It can become an obsession.

Not an especially unfortunate one.

There is something wonderfully private about it, too. We dress visibly; we decorate visibly. Scent can be almost clandestine. It changes the room you inhabit, even when nobody else quite knows why it feels different.

That may be why smell has such an odd relationship with memory. A fragrance doesn't need to explain itself before it gets somewhere. A crushed leaf, warm fruit or damp earth can summon a place before the mind has decided what it is remembering.

We tend to enter interiors through the eyes: Stone, timber, furniture, artwork, light. Scent gets there earlier. Before you've registered the chair or decided whether the artwork is genuinely interesting, the room has already introduced itself.

A beautifully designed space can feel cold.

Another can contain almost nothing and make you stay.

Then there is the television above the fireplace, which remains a separate and rather more difficult cultural problem.

Vranjes Firenze has always understood the appeal of giving something invisible a physical form. Founded in Florence in 1983 by Dr Paolo Vranjes, the house grew from the meeting of fragrance science and Florentine craftsmanship.

The octagonal bottle, inspired by Brunelleschi's dome, makes the connection almost literal: Architecture holding atmosphere.

Florentia extends that sensibility to the packaging, with botanical imagery drawing on Florentine aquatint engraving. The fine etched lines and substantial paper give the object a presence that seems deliberately at odds with the transience of what it contains.

Most packaging has the lifespan of a mayfly.

This one is meant to stay.

Fico Aromatico is less permanent. It changes with the room, the hour and whatever scent was there before it. Live with it and different facets begin to emerge. Layer it and the balance moves again. What seemed like fig becomes leaf; what seemed bright reveals something darker underneath.

The Tuscany it suggests isn't particularly picturesque.

There are no obedient cypresses posing for the photograph. There is tomato leaf bruised beneath a fingertip, a fig split by heat, orange blossom somewhere out of sight, dry timber and moss in the shade.

Enough, really.

Because the most persuasive fragrances don't tell you where you are.

They leave just enough evidence for you to decide.

Fico Aromatico is available exclusively in Australia from David Jones.

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Words by AW.

Photo courtesy of Vranjes Firenze.