Nils,
Indeed, perfumed individuals are the bane of tastings and restaurants
(though less so than smokers, but they are rare in such settings
nowadays). I have on more than one occasions reseated myself (when
possible) at a tasting to escape some particularly odoriferous
individual (or, worse, a *table* of them). San Francisco, I believe,
passed a law some years ago that banned the use of excessive perfume in
public spaces -- a law that has been assailed as "political correctness"
run amok, but which had particularly salutary effects on air quality in
elevators and other closed spaces [1].

Mark Lipton

[1] The actual pretext for the law was to protect those individuals with
allergies to perfumes, which does smack of the tail wagging the dog, but
I'd bet that the SF wine drinkers were overwhelming in favor of it for
altogether different reasons.