LaVie See What Life Offers You Heaven SCENT 4 Wander Unexpected Destinations A Taste of SPAIN August 2013
Feature Heaven Scent A Journey to the heart of France s perfume country BY EDWARD READICKER-HENDERSON
I was hoping Grasse would smell like my first love. As the center of the world s perfume industry for 300 years, this place has devoted itself to the alchemy of memory, so I was sure that some magic would carry the scent of rain and arctic blueberries and baby powder directly to my nose. But no, these sun-baked farms and thin trees in southern France, just inland and a few miles uphill from Cannes and Nice, smell nothing like that. To be fair, there is a trace of second love orange blossoms in winter in the air. Though in the cobblestone streets, in the window boxes of narrow buildings shaded in colors that must have come from the last gasp of a watercolor tin, the scent is more a suggestion than something sure, like the smudge The first time you meet someone, you think, he smells nice, and the perfume is that memory. I see on the horizon, where land ends and the Mediterranean begins. I ve come to Grasse which is both town and a region, the Pays de Grasse not because I have any great interest in perfume (I ve never bought a bottle of the stuff in my life) but because I know the power of scent. Of the five senses, smell is the strongest memory trigger, the one that takes you back to love, to walking into a desert temple, to a fine dinner, or even to the burning ozone of a Japanese train on a winter night. Scent is the filing system of our lives. It allows us to place who anwd what and where we are in the world. Jasmine fields have always been the heart of Grasse. The flowers have provided the base of the rarest and most famous scents in the world, from
Flowers in Grasse Chanel No. 5 to A La Nuit. They are the base of a million dreams and romantic nights. And they are almost gone. Where once there were farms, now there are new houses and apartments; and Grasse, once the principal supplier of jasmine, now competes with Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey, where it s grown at a fraction of the price. But it doesn t smell the same. Through perfume, Grasse jasmine has wrapped itself around centuries worth of memories. And I m here with a question: If Grasse s jasmine goes, what else do we lose? Jasmine blooms here in August, as if it has no idea that spring matters, opening long after all the other flowers have gone to seed. Not so many years ago, jasmine would have carpeted the hillsides in 1975, about 500 farms grew the white blossoms. Now, 12 do. And I can only find one farmer, Constant Vial, who will allow me on his land; many of the others have exclusive contracts with perfume companies and won t even let me in the driveway. His farm, only a few minutes outside town, smells like dirt and a hint of tuberose from a nearby patch, faded past Paris blooming yet still with a grandmothery air. It takes 800 kilograms of Grasse jasmine flowers to make one kilogram of absolu, Vial says. Ten thousand or so jasmine flowers weigh a kilogram. That means 8 million flowers are needed for a single kilo of perfume base. No way are there 8 million flowers in this field, which is maybe 30 rows wide, 40 yards long. This isn t a farm, I think, it s a really expensive hobby devoted to keeping the past alive. France
LaVie See What Life Offers You Heaven SCENT 4 Wander Unexpected Destinations August 2013 A Taste of SPAIN
Heaven Scent A Journey to the heart of France s perfume country BY EDWARD READICKER-HENDERSON
I was hoping Grasse would smell like my first love. As the center of the world s perfume industry for 300 years, this place has devoted itself to the alchemy of memory, so I was sure that some magic would carry the scent of rain and arctic blueberries and baby powder directly to my nose. But no, these sun-baked farms and thin trees in southern France, just inland and a few miles uphill from Cannes and Nice, smell nothing like that. To be fair, there is a trace of second love orange blossoms in winter in the air. Though in the cobblestone streets, in the window boxes of narrow buildings shaded in colors that must have come from the last gasp of a watercolor tin, the scent is more a suggestion than The first time you meet someone, you think, he smells nice, and the perfume is that memory. something sure, like the smudge I see on the horizon, where land ends and the Mediterranean begins. I ve come to Grasse which is both a town and a region, the Pays de Grasse not because I have any great interest in perfume (I ve never bought a bottle of the stuff in my life) but because I know the power of scent. Of the five senses, smell is the strongest memory trigger, the one that takes you back to love, to walking into a desert temple, to a fine dinner, or even to the burning ozone of a Japanese train on a winter night. Scent is the filing system of our lives. It allows us to place who and what and where we are in the world. Jasmine fields have always been the heart of Grasse. The flowers have provided the base of the rarest and most famous scents in the world, from Chanel No. 5 to A La Nuit. They are the base of a million dreams and romantic nights. And they are almost gone. Where once there were farms, now there are new houses and apartments; and
Flowers in Grasse Grasse, once the principal supplier of jasmine, now competes with Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey, where it s grown at a fraction of the price. But it doesn t smell the same. Through perfume, Grasse jasmine has wrapped itself around centuries worth of memories. And I m here with a question: If Grasse s jasmine goes, what else do we lose? Jasmine blooms here in August, as if it has no idea that spring matters, opening long after all the other flowers have gone to seed. Not so many years ago, jasmine would have carpeted the hillsides in 1975, about 500 farms grew the white blossoms. Now, 12 do. And I can only find one farmer, Constant Vial, who will allow me on his land; many of Paris France Grasse the others have exclusive contracts with perfume companies and won t even let me in the driveway. His farm, only a few minutes outside town, smells like dirt and a hint of tuberose from a nearby patch, faded past blooming yet still with a grandmothery air. It takes 800 kilograms of jasmine flowers to make one kilogram of absolu, Vial says. Ten thousand or so jasmine flowers weigh a kilogram. That means 8 million flowers are needed for a single kilo of perfume base.