Birkholz Perfume Manufacture: Italian names, German note lists

Birkholz Perfume Manufacture fills and finishes its perfumes by hand at a workshop in Kleinmachnow, on the southern edge of Berlin, and names a large part of its catalogue after Italian towns. The note lists come through in German, which makes for a slightly odd read: Roads of Rome opens on Weihrauch and Zypresse, incense and cypress, while Mornings in Milano opens on Kokosnuss and Litschi.

A family business with a fragrance sommelier

The house dates from 2017 and has 42 fragrances in the library. Philip Birkholz directs the compositions as the family's fragrance sommelier, working with established perfumers and oil suppliers rather than mixing alone at a bench. The house's own about page says each composition is created by him and brought to life with renowned perfumers, that all production has taken place in the Kleinmachnow workshop since founding, and that the fragrance oil concentration runs from 18 to 25 percent. It also names Katrin and Nasyr Birkholz and their two sons, Philip and Sven, as the people in the business.

The stated ambition is to "capture the character and memories of our customers", a line plenty of houses write. The more useful detail is the shape of the operation: hand filling and a fragrance bar, rather than the single-perfumer model of a house like Sultan Pasha Attars. Birkholz sells under collection headings, and the two that matter most here are the Italian and the French.

What the Italian names actually contain

Some of the names deliver exactly what a reader would guess. Portraits of Portofino is filed citrus, aquatic and white floral, and the list backs it up: lemon, mandarin and bergamot over magnolia, white flowers and jasmine, with amber, musk, ginger, woody notes and patchouli underneath. It is the Ligurian harbour reading, done straight.

Others ignore their postcode. Mornings in Milano is fruity, white floral and gourmand: coconut, white peach, vanilla beans and lychee, then jasmine, Thai gardenia, plumeria and ylang-ylang over vanilla, white musk and woody notes. Nothing in it is Lombard; it is a tropical, creamy floral that happens to carry a Milanese name. Nights in Noto is the familiar saffron and rose construction, with ginger, bergamot and mandarin on top, rose, jasmine, amber and patchouli in the heart, and sandalwood, oakmoss, white musk and vanilla below. Notably, no oud is listed, which is unusual for that template.

Roads of Rome is the coolest of the group on paper. Incense and cypress sit at the top, rose, jasmine, white flower and taget in the middle, and the base runs to rock rose, guaiac, vetiver, saffron, patchouli and praline. Visions of Venice goes the other way: lemon, apple and pineapple, then rose and violet, landing on cedar, amber, patchouli, vanilla, praline, musk and cardamom. Praline turns up in both Rome and Venice, which hints at a house preference rather than a geographical one.

Across the nine Birkholz fragrances detailed in the library, musk appears in every single list. Amber appears in six of them, which puts Birkholz in company with a very large part of the library: 605 fragrances carry the note.

France, Berlin and one outlier

The French Collection works the same way. Corsica - Baiser de la mer is aquatic, citrus and herbal, with bergamot, lime, violet leaves and mint over sea salt, rosemary and lavender on moss, sandalwood and musk. The plum in its heart is the one ingredient that does not belong in a sea-spray sketch, and it is probably what keeps the thing from reading as a standard summer freshener.

Grasse - Fleur de Provence is the bigger surprise. The name promises a flower field; the families listed are fruity, animalic and earthy. Blackberry, liquorice, elemi and violet lead, rose, patchouli and red thyme follow, and the base is vetiver, leather, amber and musk. That is a leather-leaning chypre shape with a floral title.

Outside the travel-themed collections, Berlin Soul is the house pointing at its own city: whiskey and hazelnut over cedar, sandalwood, oud, iris, tobacco and vetiver, finishing on amber, patchouli, tonka bean and musk. It is the only one of the nine here that lists either whiskey or oud, and in November it is the most obvious cold-weather candidate in the group. Sol e Samba is the odd one out in tone as well as geography: matcha, yuzu, grapefruit and cardamom over fig leaf, tobacco leaf and juniper berry, with cedar, amber, musk and leather below.

The price ladder is the real story

Seven of the fragrances above sit on an identical ladder: 3 ml at €15.80, a 10 ml travel size at €42, 50 ml at €169, and 100 ml at €235. That holds for Roads of Rome, Nights in Noto, Visions of Venice, Mornings in Milano and Portraits of Portofino in the Italian Collection, and for Corsica and Grasse in the French. Berlin Soul and Sol e Samba are priced lower: €179 for 100 ml, €138 for 50 ml, and €13 for 3 ml.

Two things follow. First, the collection, not the composition, sets the price, so a fruity floral and an incense-and-guaiac piece cost the same. Second, €15.80 buys a genuine trial. That is worth setting against how this library's other ends work: Ambre Noir from Jinkoh Store is $350 as an extrait, Fougère Noire is $68.25 for a single millilitre of attar, and Hoary Date from Toskovat' is $315 and currently listed out of stock. Birkholz is the cheapest entry into a 42-fragrance catalogue that this library has from Germany, and the 3 ml bottles are the sensible route in. The remaining 33 are on the house page.

Where to start

• Nights in Noto, 3 ml €15.80 up to 100 ml €235. For anyone who wears saffron, rose and amber in winter and wants to hear that shape without oud in it.
• Berlin Soul, 3 ml €13 up to 100 ml €179. For whiskey, tobacco and iris, and for the reader who would rather have the house without the Italian naming.
• Portraits of Portofino, 3 ml €15.80 up to 100 ml €235. For a straight lemon-and-magnolia citrus to keep back for spring, tested cheaply now.