NEW YORK - Filmmaker Ana Miranda recently went looking for a certain scent inside the Claus Porto Soap shot on Elizabeth Street in Nolita — something that reminds her of her grandparents. 

When she sprayed it in the air she remarked, "Totally Portugal. I think all grandparents had that smell in their house and also the grandfathers would smell like this."

Miranda loves the flood of memories that comes when she comes to sample scents. She's thrilled to see a company from her native Portugal open here. And Store Manager Linda Ortiz is equally enthusiastic about Miranda's regular visits.

Miranda is the connection to New York's Portuguese community the luxury soap company did not know existed when they opened in October. Ortiz found it on a lark.

"I started researching and I found Ana Miranda I read about her and her documentary 'Portuguese in SoHo' and the fact that there was this whole presence of Portuguese families living here and I was just so amazed and I contacted Ana and said I have to meet you and I did and I kept learning more and more about the families living here. It was amazing," Ortiz said.

Miranda's recent film, "Portuguese From SoHo" chronicles a wave of more than 750 Portuguese families who immigrated here to escape a poor economy and political turmoil after World War II. Miranda wanted to make sure their story wasn't lost. Their stories follow a similar trajectory.

"All the women would work in these factories on Broadway. So they arrive one day and two days later they were coming to work at these factories. In the moment those factory start closing and the gallery start coming in and the price of department start increasing that’s when they move out," Miranda said.

Although SoHo has become a neighborhood of high-priced shops and condos owned by bold-faced names, a close-knit community of about 50 Portuguese people endures, their presence evident by the newspapers and delicacies from their homeland still for sale here.

Miranda says it's how this community holds onto it's past that she thinks of when she heads into the store that sells the same formulations her great grandparents used.

The Claus Porto brand dates back more than 130 years.

"It’s a store that everybody knows in Portugal. If they come to this neighborhood, then people are even more happier," Ortiz said.

If you visit you can sample the smells. From citrus to the sea each fragrance here represents a different region of Portugal. And perhaps that's why it endures — the connection between smell and memories.  

As Ana says, "It doesn't matter where you are where you went to, you smell these smells and you go back home."