How We Decant

There is no certification for decanting and no standard anyone is held to. That means the only thing separating a careful operation from a careless one is what actually happens at the bench, and whether the person doing it will tell you about it.

So here is ours, in enough detail to judge it.

Where the fragrance comes from

Every decant is filled from a full retail bottle we purchased ourselves. Not testers, not refill bottles, not bulk oils, and not bottles of uncertain provenance bought because the price was unusually good.

When a bottle is empty, it is finished — we do not top up one bottle from another, and we do not combine partial bottles of the same fragrance. Each bottle produces its run of decants and then it is done.

How they are filled

Decants are filled by hand, one at a time, using either a direct bottle-to-atomizer transfer or a dedicated syringe kept for a single fragrance. Nothing is shared between fragrances without being replaced, because the fastest way to ruin an expensive decant is to fill it with equipment that still holds a trace of something else.

Atomizers are new, unused glass. We do not reuse or refill returned vials.

Fill levels are checked by volume rather than by eye. A 5ml decant contains 5ml.

What goes on the label

Perfume sold to consumers in Canada is a regulated cosmetic under the Cosmetic Regulations, and the labelling requirements are not optional. Every decant we send out carries:

The fragrance name and the house it comes from. The net quantity. The full ingredient list in INCI format, as declared by the manufacturer. Our name and address as the responsible party. All mandatory information in both English and French.

An unlabelled atomizer does not meet that standard, and a great many decants sold in Canada are unlabelled. It is the single easiest thing to check when you are deciding whether to trust a seller.

How they are packed

Decants ship in rigid boxes rather than padded envelopes, with the atomizer bagged and cushioned. This is partly about breakage — glass in a mailer does not survive a parcel sorter reliably — and partly regulatory, since fragrance is a flammable liquid and moves under limited quantity rules that a padded envelope does not satisfy.

Fragrance travels by ground only. There is no air option for this category, which is why delivery takes longer than you might expect and why we do not ship outside North America. More on that on our shipping page.

What we will not do

We will not present decants as retail-packaged product. They arrive in unbranded atomizers and they are not a substitute for the original bottle.

We will not use brand logos or brand imagery. We use brand and fragrance names only to tell you what is in the vial, which is the extent of what we are entitled to do — we are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by any fragrance house.

We will not sell a decant of something we cannot account for. If we cannot say where a bottle came from, it does not get decanted.

If something is wrong

If a decant arrives damaged, leaking, underfilled, or smelling wrong, tell us. Fragrance is subjective and we cannot take a decant back because it did not suit you — that is the risk a decant exists to make small — but a filling or shipping problem is ours to fix.

You might also want to read how to think about decant authenticity generally, including what to ask sellers who are not us.