At the time, perfume blogs and a few books were lifting the veil off a closely guarded industry. I had fallen in love not only with perfume, but also with the deft and curious descriptions of fragrance at the hands of gifted perfume critics, namely Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez who together wrote the vastly entertaining “Perfumes: The A-Z Guide.” I felt as though I had discovered two new strains of art — not to mention the most underrated of the five senses.

More recently, I decided to take a deeper look into the fragrance industry and knew there was no better place to do this than Grasse, France, a medieval town in southern Provence known as the perfume capital of the world.

— A perfumista goes to Grasse. Read more at A Perfume Devotee in the Land of French Fragrance at The New York Times.