In Florence, Perfume Goes to the Table (Too): The Pitti Fragranze 2026 Events We’ll Remember
Not just perfumes, bottles, and noses. During Pitti Fragranze 2026, Florence turned the sense of smell into a language that cuts across everything, one able to make its way into restaurants, cocktail bars, distilleries, boutiques, and even homes. It was a crossover that carried scent culture well beyond the Stazione Leopolda, the fair’s venue, turning some of the event’s most interesting moments into true sensory experiences.
Ideally capping off this journey was the dinner by Nello, a restaurant in San Casciano in Val di Pesa run by chef Federico Migliori and Chiara Zanetti, hosted on Monday, September 14 by Innocenti Wines on via del Proconsolo. It was an evening devoted entirely to smell, built on the relationship between scent and taste and created in collaboration with Bordiga and its Fragrantia line of aromatic tinctures.
Nello, when scent becomes part of dinner
The evening was the natural next step in the project Nello has devoted this year to the five senses. After the events dedicated to sight and hearing, the series arrived at smell, turning scents, aromas, spices, herbs, and fermentations into genuine culinary tools.
The “Essentia” menu opened with one of Nello’s signature dishes, “Non è una Fiorentina” (“It’s not a Fiorentina,” a nod to Florence’s famous T-bone steak), a beef tartare with marrow, potatoes, and smoke, paired with a Bordiga Smoke Gin Tonic. Next came “Il Peposo va in Oriente” (“Peposo goes East”), a contemporary take on a great Tuscan classic, the peppery beef stew, made with beef, pepper, toscanelli beans, and tahini, paired with Sangiovese Curvone.
The menu continued with a pre-dessert by Nello and “L’Aperitivo del Conte” (“The Count’s Aperitivo”), built around orange, white chocolate, bitter, vermouth, gin, and salted peanut, served with a Bordiga Negroni Sbagliato.
The common thread was Fragrantia, Bordiga’s line of handcrafted aromatic tinctures designed for mixology and cooking. Orange, Sichuan pepper, rosemary, and other aromatic notes helped shift the focus from simple tasting to perception, asking guests to smell, taste, and recognize.
That is the real signature of the Nello project: not simply adding a spectacular element to dinner, but trying to close the distance between plate and diner, making perception an integral part of the experience.
From gin to plate: the Silent Pool Experience at the Serre Torrigiani
The relationship between smell and taste had already taken center stage on Friday, September 11, at the Serre Torrigiani greenhouses with the Silent Pool Experience, an event dedicated to the English gin and its botanicals.
The evening opened with a masterclass led by Brand Ambassador Antonio Franzese, devoted to the Silent Pool perfect serve and to building your own “aroma garnish.” From 7 p.m., the program continued with a guest shift by Nico Scotto, a Tuscan bartender now at Six Senses London, alongside the Serre Torrigiani team led by Lapo Scacciati.
It was an event where gin was told not only through taste but through botanicals, scents, and mixing techniques, in keeping with the crossover between distilling and perfumery that defined much of this year’s off-site program.
Distilleria Elettrico and Insolita Trattoria: the cocktail becomes a show
On Saturday, September 12, the trail moved to the new home of Insolita Trattoria in piazza Santa Felicita, where Distilleria Elettrico met the cooking of chef Lorenzo Crescioli.
Bar manager Riccardo Di Rocco worked with the Livorno-made liqueurs and spirits of Fabio and Piercristian Elettrico, pairing them with appetizers from the kitchen. The result was a pairing built as much on flavor as on showmanship: among the cocktails, one turned fluorescent under UV lamps and released vapor and scent as it was served, while another used a real perfume tester strip as an edible garnish.
It was perhaps one of the clearest examples of how the off-site program tried to push past the traditional line between beverage and perfumery.
Hampden Estate, between rum, memory, and perception
Another standout event was the one organized on Sunday, September 13, by AquaFlor – Atelier di Alta Profumeria, in its spaces on Borgo Santa Croce.
The star was Hampden Estate, the historic Jamaican distillery, presented through a journey curated by olfactory designer Ilaria Legato and Daniele Biondi, Export Manager at La Maison & Velier.
The experience was built around three rums, Hampden Estate OWH 8 Years, Hampden 1753, and Hampden Estate 15 Years, and a series of sensory stations where sounds, colors, scents, and memory became tools to tell the story of the distillery and the Trelawny area.
Once again, then, the product wasn’t presented only through its technical features, but through a multisensory story.
AquaFlor and India, between scents, images, and botanicals
Also at AquaFlor, one of the most interesting projects was the presentation of the new fragrances Bharat Sandal and Chandana, staged as a multimedia installation in collaboration with Istituto Marangoni Firenze.
India, its traditions, and its spiritual dimension became the starting point for a journey made of scents, images, and sounds. Rounding out the experience was Jin Jiji India Dry Gin, made at the foot of the Himalayas with hand-picked juniper and tulsi, a variety of basil tied to Ayurvedic tradition.
Here the link to the food world was subtler, but all the more interesting for it: botany becomes the meeting point between perfumery and distilling.
L’Ò Profumo, two evenings with Baruti and Filippo Sorcinelli
Not just food and mixology. During Pitti Fragranze, Florence’s perfumeries naturally put on events of their own, able to turn the launch of a fragrance into a moment of encounter and storytelling.
L’Ò Profumo, a Florentine atelier devoted to artistic perfumery, chose to dedicate two evenings to two leading figures in contemporary perfumery.
Friday, September 11, belonged to Baruti and perfumer Spyros Drosopoulos, who came from Athens to present three new fragrances and share the brand’s philosophy firsthand. It was an evening built on the relationship between scent, emotion, and the more intimate side of perception.
Saturday, September 12, was instead the turn of Filippo Sorcinelli, artist, musician, designer, and perfumer, at the center of the event “Filippo Sorcinelli X L’Ò.” It was an evening in which art, the architecture of scent, and spirituality entered into dialogue.
Two very different evenings, united by the desire to tell the story of perfumery through the people who design it, going beyond the simple presentation of a product.
Cuoio Etrusco, when scent enters the space
Finally, among the projects that accompanied Pitti Fragranze, Cuoio Etrusco also deserves attention, a project that brings the theme of olfactory identity into the world of interiors and the home.
Food isn’t directly involved here, but the link to the theme of the event is strong: scent is used to build an atmosphere and convey a sense of regional identity.
Cuoio Etrusco Home Fragrance draws inspiration from the Tuscan tradition of leatherworking and from Etruscan culture, translating them into a home fragrance with notes of cotton candy and raspberry, saffron and leather, musk and cedarwood.
Alongside the home version, Cuoio Etrusco Luxury Perfume was also presented: a wearable version built on glazed raspberry, saffron, and white thyme, with a heart of suede, iris, and jasmine and a base of leather and amber woods.
It shows how scent culture can step out of the world of personal perfumery and become part of the way we live in and recognize a space.
An increasingly multisensory Florence
What the most interesting events of Pitti Fragranze 2026 had in common, then, was precisely the crossing of boundaries.
Scent made its way into the glass through gin, rum, and cocktails. It reached the plate through spices, herbs, fermentations, and aromatic tinctures. It became installation, storytelling, design, and even a marker of identity for interiors.
The result was a citywide off-site program, able to turn Florence into a sensory laboratory running parallel to the Stazione Leopolda.
And perhaps this is the most interesting direction to emerge from the 2026 edition: perfume is no longer just something you wear. It’s something you can eat, drink, listen to, see, and even use to give a place its identity.
