“The reason I got into this,” Turin will say, “is that I started collecting perfume. I’ve loved perfume from when I was a kid in Paris and Italy.”
Or maybe (he’ll tell you another day, considering it from a different angle), maybe it was “because I’m French, at least by upbringing. Frenchmen will do things Anglo men won’t, and France is a country of smells. There’s something called pourriture noble. Noble rot. It’s a fungus. It grows on grapes, draws the water out, concentrates the juice wonderfully, adds its own fungal flavor, and then you make wines like the sweet Sauternes. Paradise. From rotten grapes. The idea that things should be slightly dirty, overripe, slightly fecal is everywhere in France. They like rotten cheese and dirty sheets and unwashed women."
- The Emperor of Scent, by Chandler Burr (x)
