Bravanariz

Bravanariz is a natural perfume house in the Empordà, in the far north-east of Catalonia, Spain. Its founder and perfumer is Ernesto Collado, an artist, actor and playwright and the grandson of a chemist-perfumer, who trained in perfumery in Grasse. After losing his sense of smell and slowly getting it back, he decided to distil the landscape around him for others. The name is read as a daring, wild nose. By 2019 a London perfume shop, Bloom, was selling three limited editions from the house, 50 bottles of each.

The house is based at Mas Flaquer, an 18th-century estate in Cantallops near the Albera natural park. Plants are picked by hand in the wild, under a harvesting plan designed with biologists linked to the park, and turned into tinctures, hydrolats and essential oils in the estate's workshop. The perfumes are fully natural, and hydrolats replace water to lower the alcohol.

It has no shop in a city. Its showroom is at Mas Flaquer in Cantallops, listed among its points of sale, but no opening hours are published, so call ahead or book one of its scent walks or perfume workshops; the estate also rents rooms. Try Muga first: it is named after the river that crosses the Alt Empordà from the mountains to the sea, it is the house's portrait of the region, and a 50 ml bottle costs €130.