Bal Baroque – Finalist, Art & Olfaction Awards 2024

We are thrilled to announce that Bal Baroque, Eau de Parfum has been shortlisted as a Finalist in this year’s Institute for Art & Olfaction Awards in the Artisan Perfume category. A non-profit based in Los Angeles, USA, the Institute is dedicated to furthering education on all things scent, and its annual awards have become a highly distinguished recognition of excellence in independent perfumery.

The Art & Olfaction Awards, now in their 10th year, aim to promote public interest and awareness of the latest developments in perfume and recognise outstanding independent, artisan, and experimental perfumers. With hundreds of entrants drawn from across the globe, the IAO Awards point a spotlight on perfumes displaying a diverse range of styles and techniques and an eclectic group of perfumers and perfume back stories.

Judging is conducted blind and takes three months to complete. The Institute runs a well-oiled, but demanding process, and its commitment to the indie perfumery sector is unwavering. Olentium Bal Baroque, a vanilla-amber fragrance is one of ten finalists in its category. Two winners from each category will receive a Golden Pear accolade at the award event held in Lisbon, Portugal in early June.

As you can imagine, this is a huge milestone for Olentium, Bal Baroque and our fledgling, but steadily growing range. Olentium appreciates its early adopters, perfume aficionados and customers who have put faith in its output and have gone the extra mile to blind purchase Bal Baroque. We are indebted to those who have taken time to review Bal Baroque so diligently online – we now have our first Olentium listing on Fragrantica.

What inspired Bal Baroque

Bal Baroque is inspired by Valletta, Malta’s baroque capital and a UNESCO World Heritage City. Once briefly home to bad boy of baroque art Caravaggio, Valletta is a city of mystery and architectural mastery. Valletta was the playground of the Knights of St John for around 280 years, and then the British, who made Malta a base for their Mediterranean fleet in the 19th and 20th centuries.

As a port city that has seen the comings and goings of so many cultures and occupiers, Valletta has plenty of dark stories to reveal. In the early to mid-20th century, certain infamous streets in this diminutive and most southerly European capital were the scene of booze and bawdry fun as sailors enjoyed nightlife on shore.

Bal Baroque aims to capture in fragrance these many facets of the city. In its scent notes, the fragrance recalls its baroque grandeur as ‘A city built by gentlemen for gentlemen’ with money lavished on it from European aristocracy and the Papal See, after the Knights withstood the Ottomans in the Great Siege of 1565 – thereby “saving” Christendom.

It muses also on Valletta’s somewhat tawdry and raucous past as port city, as well as it place at the centre of shipping routes taking riches from East to West.

Olentium evokes in a seductive scent Valletta’s past – from the masterpieces of Caravaggio to the relics of 1950s’ music halls (now being given face lifts as boutique bars).

Bal Baroque’s perfume notes cover amber and gourmand families, traveling as they do from raspberry and saffron in the top, to a heart of robust, alluring velvety damask rose (in an unusual oil distilled from all parts of the rose), on to base notes aplenty – a smooth oud, vanilla, patchouli, tobacco, rum, dark chocolate and an oakwood distilled from aged, used wine barrels.

To complement that depth of fragrance, we use not water as an emollient but organic hydrosols of damask rose and geranium bourbon to increase the scent strength.

Which aspects of the intriguing history of this baroque capital hit home lie uniquely in the soul and Bal Baroque experience of the wearer.

Explore Bal Baroque Eau de Parfum
The Institute for Art & Olfaction
The 10th Golden Pear Awards