WienerBlut - Turn-of-the-century Vienna, bottled

Alexander Lauber founded WienerBlut in Vienna after spending years, from 2008 onward, researching historical perfume formulas. The name nods to Johann Strauss's waltz "Wiener Blut," written for the 1873 Vienna World's Fair – the moment Vienna presented itself to the world as a cultural capital. For WienerBlut, fragrance isn't fashion but cultural artifact: each composition tells a story from Vienna's Belle Époque, from grand ballrooms to imperial orangeries to the salons where psychoanalysis was born.

WienerBlut works in small batches with a high share of natural raw materials, building complex, unisex compositions that unfold slowly on the skin instead of announcing themselves all at once. The bottles follow the same principle: traditional glassmaking and Bakelite caps, a material rooted in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy – small irregularities in the edges and details are left intentionally, a mark of real craftsmanship rather than industrial polish.

This connection to the city of Vienna that comes through in every single bottle – whether in the ballroom of Ballroom Bohème, the orangery of Hesperia, or the salons that inspired Unheimlich's nod to Sigmund Freud. Each fragrance feels like a small piece of Viennese cultural history, brought back to life with patience and an even greater love of detail.