{"id":454939,"date":"2026-09-05T23:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T23:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/454939\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T23:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T23:38:11","slug":"bottling-coronado-award-winning-perfume-captures-the-scent-of-crown-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/454939\/","title":{"rendered":"Bottling Coronado: Award-winning perfume captures the scent of Crown City"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When New York City-based perfumer Renee Junewicz found herself in Coronado, she was inspired by the scents and smells of the island. So much, in fact, that she created and bottled her own fragrance, calling it Sincerely, Coronado.<\/p>\n

It all started in 2018 around Mother\u2019s Day. Junewicz was staying on the island while her son trained with the U.S. Navy. She said it was a stressful time in her life as a mother, so she tried to focus her attention elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember walking through Coronado and noticing the gardenias and jasmine growing along the residential streets, the green freshness, the ocean air and how extraordinarily beautiful everything seemed,\u201d she said. \u201cIn the middle of all that worry, I found myself focusing on those things.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says she was struck by the combination of lush flowers, green hedges and fresh coastal air.<\/p>\n

\u201cGardenia and jasmine seemed to grow almost casually around the island, yet their fragrance would stop you in your tracks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She noted a \u201cfascinating\u201d olfactory contrast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is the coolness and slight salinity of the ocean air, but also the warmth and fullness of the flowers,\u201d she said. \u201cIt can smell fresh, green, marine and intensely floral all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Junewicz continued to visit the island and spent December of 2020 at the Coronado Shores. When she returned to New York, she wanted to preserve something beautiful from her visits to the island.<\/p>\n

In 2025, she released the award-winning fragrance, Sincerely, Coronado.<\/p>\n

The fragrance is described as a \u201clove letter to a place by the Pacific.\u201d It\u2019s celebrated for its notes of gardenia and jasmine hedges, cool green freshness and a suggestion of ocean air.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fragrance grew from Coronado, California\u2026quiet streets, white houses warmed by sunlight, and flowers blooming close to the sea,\u201d according to the perfumer\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

Sincerely, Coronado\u00a0went on to receive six distinctions in the 2025 Top Artisan Fragrance Awards, including recognition for Aroma, Scent Artistry, Ingredient Combinations and Top Artisan Perfume.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want people to feel transported \u2014 to experience the beauty, serenity and slightly dreamlike quality of Coronado, even if they have never been there,\u201d said Junewicz.<\/p>\n

The fragrance is available for purchase on the Scent & Story NYC website.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>How it all began<\/p>\n

Before she knew anything about making perfume, Junewicz understood that fragrance could hold a memory.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy fascination with perfume began when I was very young,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her father was a career Navy carrier pilot and would return from deployments around the world with beautiful perfumes for her mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, those bottles seemed to contain places I had never been and worlds I knew nothing about,\u201d said Junewicz.<\/p>\n

She said she got her first perfume-making kit in the third grade and she proceeded to make the \u201cmost terrible fragrances imaginable.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the childhood fascination with perfume never left her, and she moved on to study the art and technical craft of perfumery, including training at the Grasse Institute of Perfumery in France.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Junewicz opened up Scent & Story NYC,<\/a> a fragrance house built around memories, people and places.<\/p>\n

A sense of place and story<\/p>\n

Junewicz said that most of her fragrances often begin with a real memory or place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI write the story first and then try to translate what I remember into scent,\u201d she said. \u201cFor me, place is inseparable from memory. We often remember the people we loved through the places where we knew them, and scent can bring the whole experience back with astonishing immediacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that\u00a0Sincerely, Coronado captures the island as she experienced it, but it also holds the family memories that became attached to that place.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fragrance came from an emotional period in my life as a mother,\u201d said Junewicz.\u00a0 \u201cAlthough Coronado was extraordinarily beautiful, my feelings at the time included love, pride, worry, and uncertainty. I think fragrance can hold several emotions simultaneously.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also holds the memory of flowers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things I love about Coronado is that extraordinary flowers appear in the most personal and unexpected places,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

One day, while walking to church, she came upon a beautiful little garden filled with roses. She describes it as an intimate, lovingly-tended space, almost magical in its perfection.<\/p>\n

While the floral composition in Sincerely, Coronado is not intended to reproduce one particular garden, it\u2019s the unique interpretation of the flowers, greenery, and atmosphere that lingered with her.<\/p>\n

\u201cA place is never merely a location,\u201d she said. \u201cIt becomes a container for people, emotions and moments we want to preserve. Fragrance gives me a way to revisit those places \u2014 and, for a little while, to be with those people again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bottling Coronado<\/p>\n

When it comes to crafting a perfume like Sincerely, Coronado, it\u2019s all about capturing the special scents of the island.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe green effect comes from a \u2018petitgrain accord\u2019 that evokes the leaves, stems and hedges surrounding Coronado\u2019s flowers,\u201d said Junewicz.<\/p>\n

For the marine aspect, Junewicz used \u201cseaweed absolute\u201d as part of a larger custom-blended fragrance mixture. It\u2019s designed to suggest cool, salt-tinged Pacific air. The deeper notes come from oakmoss and a warm amber, which give the fragrance depth and anchor the airy florals.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeaweed absolute may sound unusual in a perfume, but it is used with great restraint,\u201d she said. \u201cIt does not make the fragrance smell literally like seaweed. Instead, it contributes a subtle, natural and mineral quality beneath the flowers.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she wanted the perfume to capture this contrast, rather than smell like a conventional tropical or beach fragrance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Challenges and rewards<\/p>\n

Junewicz says the most rewarding moment in creating a fragrance is when someone smells one of her perfumes and feels something, especially when it awakens a memory of their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey may not have lived my particular story, but the fragrance connects them to a person, place or moment from their own life,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The biggest challenge is\u00a0translating an emotional memory into scent while still creating a balanced, beautiful and wearable perfume, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMemory does not arrive neatly divided into top, middle, and base notes,\u201d said Junewicz. \u201cA perfumer has to determine which materials will convey not only how a place smelled, but also how it felt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Celebrating a scent<\/p>\n

While Junewicz also works as a trained artist, she says fragrance gives her an entirely new kind of freedom.<\/p>\n

\u201cFragrance can reach a much larger audience,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But scent is intensely personal. She says that one person may not respond to a fragrance, while ten others may fall in love with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIntellectually, I understand that, but creating anything still requires vulnerability,\u201d she said. \u201cYou put something deeply personal into the world without knowing whether other people will recognize what you were trying to express.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says she worked on Sincerely, Coronado for over a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really putting myself out there when I offer it to the outside world,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s why the awards for the fragrance are so meaningful to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that the awards reassured her that the beauty and emotion she believed were present in the fragrance could be experienced by people outside her own memories.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey made me feel that what I had created was not only personally true, but that it could communicate that truth to others,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Junewicz hopes the people of Coronado will enjoy Sincerely, Coronado as she does.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope people in Coronado will recognize something authentic in it, while also finding room within the fragrance for their own memories of the island,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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