Ex Manifattura Tabacchi reaches the finals of the Art and Olfaction Awards: Neapolitan perfume conquers the world!

In 2025, Neapolitan tobacco spoke with an international accent.
Ex Manifattura Tabacchi di Floridia Parfum has been shortlisted for the 2025 Art and Olfaction Awards in the Independent category, bringing a young Italian brand to the most respected stage of research perfumery.

The Art and Olfaction Awards: Where Independent Excellence Is Measured

The Art and Olfaction Awards are a non-profit prize founded in 2013 to “celebrate excellence in independent, artisanal and experimental perfumery” and to offer fair competition to smaller creators, often invisible compared to the giants of the industry.

The 2025 edition is the eleventh in the history of the award and features three main categories:

• Artisan
• Independent
• Experimental

The finalists are selected by the Institute for Art and Olfaction through an international jury of perfumers, artists, academics, and business professionals, who evaluate all submissions blindly, identified only by a number and an anonymized brief.

For 2025, the Institute announced the finalists in a dedicated article, specifying that the winners would be announced on May 29th in Los Angeles, during a ceremony described as "friendly and bohemian." The evening took place at the Cicada Club in downtown Los Angeles and was the heart of Scent Week, a week of meetings, workshops, installations, and olfactory fairs showcasing the best of artistic perfumery and olfactory research from around the world.

In this context, being a finalist is not a simple "compliment":

• it means having been selected from among all the applications received from all over the world;
• it means that the juice was able to emerge blindly, without the name of the brand, the nose or the creative director, but only for its olfactory writing;
• and, in the case of Ex Manifattura Tabacchi, to do so in a category – Independent – ​​where structured and highly recognized brands compete within the niche panorama.

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Ex Manifattura Tabacchi: an Italian finalist in the Independent category

Specifically, the official press release for the Art and Olfaction 2025 finalists lists Ex Manifattura Tabacchi (Floridia) among the finalists in the Independent category, created by perfumer Giovanni Festa with creative direction by Antonio Di Giulio Cesare. The fragrance is presented as "a historical reconstruction of a Kentucky tobacco processing factory near Naples."

The technical data sheet confirms:

• Launch year: 2024
• Olfactory family: Woody Aromatic
• Target: unisex
• Nose: Giovanni Festa.

On the official Floridia portal, Ex Manifattura Tabacchi is included in the Gold Collection, is defined as unisex, woody aromatic, “virile – aromatic – animalic” mood and is explicitly indicated as a “FINALIST at Art and Olfaction 2025 in Los Angeles”.

Storytelling: From the streets of eastern Naples to the halls of the Cicada Club

Floridia's narrative is rooted in the city of Naples: the brand presents itself as an "exclusive olfactory journey" that recounts the history, art, and magic of Naples in every note.

For Ex Manifattura Tabacchi, the story begins "among the streets of eastern Naples," where expert artisans processed the finest dried tobacco leaves, rolling them by hand into paper cylinders. The fragrance "encapsulates the essence of historic Neapolitan factories," recalling the distinctive scent of those environments and transforming it into a timeless olfactory experience.

The imagery is twofold:

• on the one hand, the industrial realism of tobacco manufacturing, with the concreteness of the Kentucky tobacco leaves being processed;
• On the other, a Naples of memory and tradition, where tobacco becomes a symbol of craft, craftsmanship, and worker pride. The official storytelling emphasizes the artisanal dimension: men and women who "infuse passion and mastery into every single piece," while the fragrance translates this gesture into olfactory layers of warmth, smoke, wood, and Mediterranean aromatic accents.

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The olfactory pyramid: a Mediterranean tobacco on a high-tech basis

The olfactory pyramid of Ex Manifattura Tabacchi, reported in agreement on the official website, Fragrantica and Parfumo, is as follows:                                                         Top notes

• Violet
• Myrtle
• Tobacco
• Heart notes
• Lavender
• Vetiver
• Vanilla
• Base notes
• Guaiac wood
• Norlimbanol™

The result is a woody-aromatic main accord, with strong tobacco, herbaceous, amber and lavender nuances, as summarized by Fragrantica's “main accords”.

The role of Norlimbanol™

Among the base notes, Norlimbanol™, a molecule from Firmenich, stands out:

• described as a powerful dry, woody and amber accord with a cedar character;
• Defined by the manufacturer as a woody-amber note that "effects the entire olfactory pyramid, from top to bottom" and enhances the fresh opening notes, increasing the fragrance's lasting power. In Ex Manifattura Tabacchi, the presence of Norlimbanol™ helps structure the tobacco accord on a modern, dry, and long-lasting foundation, marrying with guaiac wood to build a smoky, slightly animalic base that underpins the entire narrative of the manufacture.

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Perfume on the skin: perceptions and character

Reviews from the international community converge on some key features:

• tobacco is perceived as the absolute protagonist, intense but not cloying, closer to cigars and dried leaves than to gourmand interpretations;
• the nuances of violet and myrtle give a Mediterranean and slightly green breath to the opening, ideally connecting the raw material to the Neapolitan territory evoked by the concept;
• in the heart, lavender introduces an aromatic fougère touch that dialogues with vanilla, more velvety than sugary, while vetiver takes care of drying and strengthening the structure;
• the base based on guaiac wood and Norlimbanol™ is often associated with a long persistence and a calibrated but present trail, with a character perceived as marked, decisive, sometimes explicitly "virile", in line with the mood declared by the brand.

The result is a structured, dry yet enveloping tobacco that doesn't follow the vanilla and liquorish clichés of the genre, but prefers to weave a realistic and slightly rough olfactory portrait, like the smoke-impregnated wood of an old factory.

Why this finalist matters for Italian niche perfumery

Ex Manifattura Tabacchi's entry among the finalists of the Art and Olfaction Awards 2025 – Independent category is not just a medal on the bottle:

• it brings together a young Italian company, rooted in a specific territory (Naples and its industrial heritage), with an award that aims to give global visibility to independent projects;
• confirms the centrality of the tobacco theme in contemporary perfumery, but interpreted in a narrative and identity-based way, as a "historical reconstruction" of a place and a profession;
• demonstrates how a formula that combines classic materials (tobacco, lavender, vetiver, vanilla) and molecular technology (Norlimbanol™) can speak to both the most technical enthusiasts and those looking for a strong story to wear.    For readers of a magazine specializing in niche perfumery, Ex Manifattura Tabacchi therefore represents an interesting case study:
  a perfume born to evoke the dust, wood and smoke of a tobacco factory on the outskirts of Naples, and which ends up, a few months later, among the names that count on the stage in Los Angeles.

A trajectory that says a lot not only about Floridia Parfum, but about the state of health of independent Italian perfumery, today perfectly capable of withstanding comparison with the best international projects when there is only one judge:                     the jus, naked, anonymous and impeccably constructed.