Folio Columns – Luca Turin (1)

None has been seen since 1938, which is chronologically neat, because exactly seventy years later a gardenia oil has reappeared. It comes from a farm in Fusagasugà, Colombia, forty-eight kilometers due southwest of Bogotà as the hummingbird flies. I became aware of its existence thanks to Trygve Harris who runs Enfleurage, a small New York City outfit specializing in top-notch essential oils.

Unlike many perfumery luminaries who claim to scour the world for exotic essences but never set foot outside Paris’s périphérique, Ms. Harris really does ferret out extraordinary things from remote corners of the planet. She sent me a milliliter of the gardenia oil and a teaspoon of the butter. The method by which these marvels were obtained is novel: an enfleurage in cold palm oil (there’s progress for you, since classic enfleurage used pig suet). The fragrance oil is then extracted into alcohol and vacuum-distilled. The idea of this and all other low-temperature methods is to treat the flowers gently and capture the smell without loss or damage.

I’ll admit one of the few things I am cynical about is gardenia. I’ve smelled too many, from Chanel’s eponymous mess to Guerlain’s cruel joke, that smelled nothing like the real thing. Until proven innocent, I regard all “gardenias” as I do footprints of the Snowman, engines that run on vacuum energy, or good wines from Savoie.

When I put this one on the back of my hand, I was ready to vent my spleen yet again. For a few seconds, the oil had me puzzled, with an intense herbaceous topnote that my daughter would have called pasta, i.e. thyme and laurel. Just as I was about to start griping, the most stunning gardenia hologram materialized before me, all present and correct, from bouquet de provence via tuberose, to the famous mushroom note that makes gardenia so different from other white flowers.

My next thought was unworthy of a university graduate and intermittently rational being.

This book is dedicated to my Ideal Reader and Companion, TS. I am forever grateful to Daniel Weber for asking me to write for his wonderful magazine, and to Robin Cackett for doing a miraculous job of translating my columns into German. OceanofPDF.com Table of Contents Foreword PERFUME NOTE (DUFTNOTE) 2003-2010 Blue Stratos L’Instant Perfume for Perseus The Linnaeus of Fragrance His for Her Hers for Him Floral Hybrids The Triumph of Niche In Search of Lost Perfume Shalimar Light: The Same but Different Nombre Noir Rubber JAR Coty Sunday IFRA and Guerlain Spices Candles Two for the Guys Roots Chêne and Daim Blond Repellant, Attractant The Medley and the Duet Bespoke The Osmothèque As They Used to Make ‘Em Perfume Time The Lost Chord Bitterness Mozart Salad Beauty First L’avenir de l’homme The Art of the Natural Simplexity On Ice A New Smell The Ninth Lavender Insolence An Open Letter to Coty L’Artisan Parfumeur Perfume: the Perfumes Les Exclusifs The Time Machine Mitsouko’s Facelift The Guide Perfume: A Film About Greasy Virgins Clean Etat Libre d’Orange The School of Calone Special Effects So You Want to Be a Perfumer?

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• Title: –
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