All beings in these villages come from long lines of fishermen and shipbuilders. Their souls live in the rotten woods of the black, salt-encrusted huts. In the cold smoke of burnt onycha shells. In the murmur of the half-petrified algae on the stakes in the deserted beaches. In the crackling of tiny bursting bubbles, their green ethereal breath in the mud of the disappearing seas. In the straw flowers that wither trembling in the gusts, ground into sepia spice in the dunes. In the sand of bitter myrrhiades of grains. The traces of resin crystals, the salt pheromones, lost by whales eons ago.
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Filippo Zanini and his friend Giacomo have been running their small artisan label Zanini in Prato, Italy, since 2023. They use 100% natural raw materials, most of which they harvest themselves and process traditionally. The raw materials are given plenty of time to mature. The resulting fragrance landscapes are extraordinary. “Madly in love with untamed nature. Following materials from source to extraction. Staying with the process—even when it is slow, complex, inefficient,” reads their manifesto on Instagram.
“Fermo Pesca” is a particularly evocative and intense landscape based on various types of Indonesian oud, an incense-like Merauke oud, an earthy-green Natuna oud, and a salty Pontianak oud, which, together with salty-green seaweed notes, ethereal eucalyptus capers, aromatic, herbaceous, spicy myrtle, and smoky onycha shells to create a smoldering, misty image of dark, rotten wood by the sea, mineral, sharp, and smoked. Immortelle and strawflower sprinkle sepia-colored, curry-like spicy notes over it. The various types of myrrh lend a bitter-resinous depth beneath an ambergris that was harvested on the coast of Sicily and macerated for over four years, which in turn appears to be salty-resinous with a subtle musky character. The result is a bitter-spicy, woody-earthy, resinous-smoky fragrance with subtle aquatic-mineral animalic notes. Natural, terpene-oily, multi-layered. A masterpiece.
