![Smellbound
“Dominique Dubrana [is] a 54-year-old Frenchman living in Italy, a Sufi convert, a grand eccentric and a genius of sorts. …
Most uncommon of all was a series of strange and counterintuitive animal extracts: ambergris, a curiously sweet-smelling tincture made from a waxy substance that occasionally washes up on distant shores, and which is, in fact, digestive material regurgitated by sperm whales; castoreum, which is made from sacs found in a beaver’s groin and smells like crotch sweat; civet paste, which is extracted from the perineal glands of an Ethiopian catlike creature and smells fecal in large doses and, bizarrely, flowery in small ones.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l90sr1UQnl1qzp6rzo1_400.jpg)
“Dominique Dubrana [is] a 54-year-old Frenchman living in Italy, a Sufi convert, a grand eccentric and a genius of sorts. …
Most uncommon of all was a series of strange and counterintuitive animal extracts: ambergris, a curiously sweet-smelling tincture made from a waxy substance that occasionally washes up on distant shores, and which is, in fact, digestive material regurgitated by sperm whales; castoreum, which is made from sacs found in a beaver’s groin and smells like crotch sweat; civet paste, which is extracted from the perineal glands of an Ethiopian catlike creature and smells fecal in large doses and, bizarrely, flowery in small ones.”
