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The cherry lifted out of the evening's first drink.

Sankt Pauli was shaped over centuries by sailors coming off Hamburg's harbour and by artists, musicians and night owls. It is a place where stories begin. The house was founded there and named this one after its postcode, and the deep red of it is the homage.

It starts in glossy, saturated red. Latex sits at the centre, smooth and faintly industrial, and it is what pulls the maraschino cherry away from anything simply sweet. The cherry stays vivid, almost liqueur-like, powdered over by heliotrope and heated by clove. Underneath, cedar runs dry. Worn leather sits below that, and tobacco holds the depth. Opulent without turning ornamental, polished and raw at the same time.

32.JULI was founded in Hamburg by sisters Juli Pätzold and Maria Magdalena Stachowiak, who hold two degrees in olfactory design between them and more than a decade of work behind them. The name belongs to the 32nd of July, a day that exists on no calendar. An architect and a designer by training, the two of them shape the object as closely as they shape the liquid.

Everything is made from plant-based materials alone. Essential oils, botanical extracts, resins, hydrolates and natural isolates are the whole vocabulary, and those materials are pushed a long way from their origins: latex, sun lotion, wet stone, crème brûlée. Each bottle is finished with a ceramic cap the house designed and makes individually by hand, so the marks left by its making stay visible on the object.