Italy

Callum Edge

Master Perfumier Baldo Baldinini is making the most delicious artisanal vermouths and gins that we’ve ever drunk.Baldo has a form of achromatopsia – a rare medical condition that causes total colour blindness – as well as synaesthesia, giving him a heightened olfactory sense and the ability to link smells to musical notes. Realising there was little formal notation in his field while working as a perfumer and, later, as a consultant for some of Italy’s best chefs (including three-Michelin-starred Massimo Bottura), Baldo invented his own method of writing aromatic ‘recipes’ on musical staves.At his home laboratory in Rimini on the Adriatic coast, Baldo draws from an ‘aroma library’ of more than 50,000 essences, which he has carefully extracted from raw ingredients sourced from around the world.He adds a selection of these essences (along with a tiny amount of sugar and distillate) to base wines made by a winery in Emilia-Romagna to craft his amaros and vermouths, which are bottled without preservatives, colouring, or additives. Offering captivating perfumes and intense flavours, Baldo’s amaro is rich with exotic spices and bitter citrus notes, while his vermouth layers ripe berry fruit over dried herbs and petals.For his ‘Paracelso’ gin – named after the 16th century Swiss alchemist – Baldo adds a secret recipe of rare botanicals to a high-quality neutral spirit. Such is its purity and complexity that it is perfect to be enjoyed neat over ice or with just a splash of tonic.

DiBaldo

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