Maurizio Cerizza

Maurizio Cerizza has lived among essential oils since childhood. His family's adventure in the world of perfumery began in 1946 with the creation of the EMA company in Milan. Ten years later, his father Aurelio opened a branch in Imperia, dedicated to distilling and extracting natural products such as jasmine, rose, iris, and sandalwood. As a child, Maurizio watched with fascination the distillation tools and the safes where the most precious absolutes were kept.

His mentor was Rene Ricord, a teacher at the prestigious Roure perfumery school. Ricord was the assistant to Jean Carles, the legendary perfumer who founded the Roure school in 1946 and established a teaching method based on scent memorization and classification. Cerizza maintains that a perfume is first born in the perfumer's mind and can be "written" on paper even before any essential oil is blended.

Maurizio Cerizza views a perfumer essentially as an artist who must use raw materials like a painter uses colors or a musician uses notes. He finds it fundamental to create constant mental associations with scents; for him, sandalwood has a nuance reminiscent of milk, sesame suggests hazelnut, and rum absolute evokes burnt wood. He is a member of the SFP (Societe Francaise des Parfumeurs) and serves on international juries evaluating aromatic roses in Nantes and Monza, which he values as opportunities to exchange expertise with other "noses."