In this place, the museum asks you a question: What does love smell like? Everyone has their own opinion on this subject, but we at the Museum of Scents will show you the aromas of love in literature.

In books, loved ones are always compared to flowers, so in this corner we are going to discover the relationship between certain flowers such as rose, orange blossom, violet and jasmine and love.

Take one of the coloured books, when you open it you will find a small literary text and when you turn the page, the scent.

Now look at the yellow book, it contains the aroma of cinnamon flower and next to it we have some headphones that we can put on to listen to the voice of María Dolores Pradera with her song "la flor de la canela", and the sensation of cinnamon surrounds us. Enjoy this moment.

Oenological visit:

Floral aromas form a family in itself of primary origin, thus we have the aroma of orange blossom which is characteristic in white varieties such as Riesling, Gerwustraminer and Muscatel, Chenin blanc, Chardonay and viognier.

The rose that we find as a fresh rose in white varieties, such as Gewurztraminer or Muscatel, and as a ripe and wilted rose in great aged red wines.

The violet violet appears in both red and white varieties, and can be found in wines made with Viognier and Viognier.
in wines made from Viognier, Merlot and Tempranillo, characteristic of carbonic maceration wines, such as those made with
It can also be found in the great wines of Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rhone, Piedmont, Piedmont and Rioja or Ribera del Duero. As a curiosity, in ancient Greece it was attributed the capacity to dissipate drunkenness, which is why they wore crowns of violets.

Jasmine is present exclusively in white wines, especially those made from Chenin blanc, Torrentes, Semillon, Pinot gris, Moscatel and Albariño.

In this selection we have the cinnamon flower which comes detailed within locution 18 of the spice route.

Posters:

The identification of the beloved woman with a flower is a motif present in cultured love literature since very ancient times, also since those times flowers and fragrant plants have been used to seduce and also to use incantations.

The contact with the East and the great variety of spices brought with them led to the art of female seduction being rediscovered by the incorporation of a great variety of aromas.
In some communities these aromas were used by women to perfume the inside of their bodies. The drunk compound acted in such a way that the sweat, and even intimate parts of the drinker, smelled good.

In the 12th century, attempts were made to create magical perfumes that would bring longevity and beauty, and in the 16th century perfumed recipes for rejuvenation appeared, such as that of the alchemist Girolamo Ruscelli, who, in the Secrets of Master Alexis the Piedmontese, advised ladies to use a water for dyeing, prepared as follows:

"Take a young crow in the nest, feed it with hard-boiled eggs for forty days, kill it and distil it with myrtle leaves, talcum powder and almond oil."
Smell may be a condition for sexual attraction, even if it is imperceptible. The genes of the immune system may determine the composition of the bacteria on a person's skin, so that each person may have a unique smell.

For Claus Wedekind, a scholar of the so-called Fundamental Histocompatibility Complex (CHF), this clearly influences the type of smell a woman finds attractive in a man. Men with a different CHF to the female CHF are the most attractive to women, and this probably has to do with reproduction, as children need a very diverse immune system.

In the study by researchers from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Calgary (Canada) published in 2003 in the journal Science, the authors argue that the female brain doubles the number of neurons in the olfactory region by the action of a hormone called prolactin and that the fact that blood levels of prolactin "increase markedly after orgasm in both male and female humans would serve specific behaviours related to courtship or long-term relationship". And it would have the function of cementing the relationship during the prolonged gestation period.
AZAHAR. In the same way that Celestina appeals to the arousal of feeling or emotions, she also does so with the senses. At the beginning of the

Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea, Pármeno says to Calisto:

"And in his house he made perfumes, forged storax, menjuí, animes, amber, civet, powder, musks, muskets. He had a chamber full of stills (...) He made water for smelling, of roses, orange blossom, jasmine, clover, honeysuckle and carnation, musk and musk, powdered with wine. (...) Bath apparatuses, this is a marvel: from the herbs and roots that he had on the roof of his house hanging, camomile and rosemary, marshmallow, marshmallow, coriander, coronilla, elderflower and mustard flower, lavender and white laurel, tortarosa and gramonilla, wild flower and figwort, golden beak and hojatinta. The oils that he extracted for the face are hard to believe: of storax and jasmine, lemon, seeds, violets, menjuí, alfócigos, pine nuts, granillo, jujubes, neguilla, lupins, peas and carillas, and birdwort, and a little bit of balsam she had in a small bag that she kept for the scratching she had around her nostrils (...). (...) She did such marvellous things that, when the French ambassador came here, she sold a maid she had for a virgin three times. "

At another point in the play, Celestina promises Lucretia, Melibea's maid, to give her substances to stop her from having bad smells.

VIOLET, the flower of Josephine, Napoleon's mistress, contains IONONO which blocks our sense of smell. You smell it and it almost immediately disappears. If you move away from it for a short time the scent comes back to us and fades away again. This scent has been used to create love filters to conquer the beloved.

The scientific name of the genus "viola" comes from the Greek "Io", Jupiter's mistress, who was transformed into a calf as a result of the jealousy of Jupiter's wife. In order for the calf to feed well in the meadows, Jupiter created violets.

ROSA

JUAN RAMON JIMENEZ

Love

What does love smell like? It seems, when you love,
that the whole world has the smell of spring.
The dry leaves turn and the branches with snow,
and he is still young and ardent, smelling of eternal rose.
Everywhere he opens invisible garlands,
all his backgrounds are lyrical - laughter or sorrow,
the woman at his kiss takes on a magical meaning
which, as in the paths, endlessly renews itself...
Music of ideal concerts comes to the soul,
words of a light breeze among groves;
one sighs and cries, and the sighing and the crying
leave like a romantic freshness of honeysuckles...

JAZMIN: Since the Middle Ages there was no monastery or convent cloister that did not protect this flower, the jasmine, both for its intense perfume and for the candour of its petals.

Its essential oil is obtained by a costly process called "effleurage". The jasmine flowers are picked at night when the plant is at its most aromatic and release their essential oil for several days after harvesting.

Between the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the system used in poetry to elaborate images used different flowers. Thus, in the Baroque, flowers could symbolise life itself, representing its brevity and insignificance.

"Flower is the jasmine, if fair,
not one of the most vivid,
for it lasts but a few hours
what rays it has as a star;
If the amber blossoms, it is she
the flower that it retains in itself.
Learn, flowers, in me
what goes from yesterday to today,
that yesterday I was a marvel,
and my shadow I am not yet".

(Góngora)