Perfume Routes

I'd like to begin the blog with my visit to Grasse, France.
Grasse is known as the perfume capital of the world.
Going to Grasse was a life time utopia coming real for me. 

I'm not quite sure how the first inception was digged in my mind, either from birth with my super human sense for scents or Suskind's novel "Das Perfume" that i'd read and been enchanted by in high school.

August 2012 brought me that chance.

I want to share my experiences and moments that i enjoyed, you may be already interested in the subject or maybe better than that, i dig an inception to your mind too  :)

The story begins in Spain but it is the subject of another blog. 

I was travelling the sea side cities of Spain close to France Riviera, Tarragona and Barcelona.

It was very easy to arrange the trip.

It took me an hour to pass from Barcelona to Nice via plane.  

Grasse is close to the sea side cities Nice and Cannes, situated landward in the middle, up in the mountains.

Travelling from Nice to Grasse is quite easy. There are buses directly from the airport .

You will be in Grasse within an hour, paying only 1 euro (!) for the trip.

It was the most twisting road, climbing up in the mountains, slipping you aside.

Everything you see is painted green, a miraculous welcome of nature! 

The air so clean and fresh that it literally extends your lungs and mind, filling you with youth.

We need to do this kind of detox time off's as being the polluted residants of mega cities. 

We do not breathe, only tend to breathe but you can't mock your body with this chemically overloaded air you live in.

I had booked a little, cosy boutique hotel before.

Don't expect to find premium hotels in this "slow" city, i think you would not choose them anyway. 

The hotels are affordable, nice and people are very welcoming.

As i was trying to find my hotel via phone navigation, there it was! 

You can't ever get lost in Grasse.

The upstairs room with a great sight of the valley was mine at last.

I had planned my days, there was the famous Jasmine Festival on the 3rd and 4th of August.

I watched the magnificient fireworks  on the night of the opening of the festival.

There were strings up in the streets spraying jasmine water all over as you're passing by. Smells like heaven.... 

The view of my room

Streets washed with precious jasmine water!!

Next day i visited the boutique perfume shops and factories. 
Fragonard, Galimard an Molinard are the biggest and most famous three's among the others.

They produce the raw essences for the big companies that we know for perfume making as well as they also have their own lines under their brand names.

Pure perfumes, EDP's, EDT's, natural oils, soaps, room scents with the bambou sticks and scented candles... All these beauties made with great effort drove me mad!

My sense of smell was exhausted in the end.

Grasse, besides having its own brands, is a production city for raw goods.
Industry here mostly works as a subcontractor for international companies such as Coty Prestige, P&G Beaute etc. 

Unfortunately it is very hard to compete with those gigantic brands.

There are nearly 60 companies varying on production capacities in Grasse, employing nearly 3500 workers. 
Besides these, some companies such as Chanel has not confine itself to that and bought its own planting areas. Chanel has its own jasmine and rose fields in Grasse.

Perfume industry is what makes Grasse famous for.

Next day i attended Galimard's perfume creating workshop which was the key stone of my journey.

You create your own perfume with your favourite notes.
Our trainer (mentor for me!) was one of the famous "noses" of Galimard and told me that my sense of scents is quite noticable as a talent, that made me a good "nose" too. 
It was the first time that somebody told me something good about my nose! 
When i told her that i was a chemist, she told me that it is the first step of all.
She gave me further information about the colleges and universities. 
Who knows, maybe someday, sometime...

If you are interested in, i'm passing the workshop adress and contact details.
You can book via internet or you can get the reservation from Galimard's shop in Grasse;
 Galimard Workshop

The workshop is in 5 route de Pégomas'. 
Again you can get there with the 1 euro buses.

In the end my pride, my own perfume stood within my hands, composed of amber, tuberose, cedar and lilac in the base notes,  fleur de jacinthe, fleur de lilas, ylang ylang, tiare, bambou (a male perfume note indeed) and of course muguet des bois in the heart notes.

For the airy top notes, i had pineapple, bergamote verte, jasmin orientale, fruits de bergamote and fruits de cassis.

For the name i was not very confused as the rest of the group put their names for it and my name would perfectly fit. "Muguet Pur" ,(my name is the same in Turkish)

Following day, i visited the gardens of International Perfume Museum (MIP) in Mougins and the factory of Fragonard. I was like head over the clouds!

In the gardens you can see and smell every flower and plant for all the essences used in your favourite perfumes.
Famous citrus notes at one side, giving you the gourgeous citrus, lemony flavors when you pisk a small piece. Woody notes follow them, a little more heady.
White flowers, not to mention actually, have the crown, definetely  a dreamwork. 
You see the the jasmine fields, Grasse is particularly famous for the jasmine, and lavande fields.
Tuberose, absinthe, fraise, strawberry, immortale, roses, amber, cedar and much much more are waiting for you...
I advise you to try the lavande honey and rose jam from gardens of MIP.
Really a gourmet taste...

I guess Holy Hands rained on the garden for 15 minutes especially for me! 
After the rain, the scents evaporating from the garden was beyond comparison.
I stayed in the gardens for 5 hours, still not enough. 
At Fragonard's factory i had the chance to see the old techniques of perfume making and up to date soap making, shaping and packaging machines.
In the laboratory the same gas chromatographs that i work on would be testing rose oil instead of my stinking chemicals.



Fragonard's Laboratory

Soap shaping machine

In Fragonard's factory you can try every scent you are curious for. Fruits, white flowers, woody's, green notes... They are captured in fat waiting for you to try. 

 Muguet flower that i take my name from

Famous Sandalwood :) Looks really like a wood



 Musk scent used to be extracted from the glands of this poor musk cat. But musk nowadays is produced syntheticly to protect the endangered musk cat.  I think no scent could be rightous to kill an animal.  A beautiful scent from an animal gland reminded me of this expensive coffee Cape Luwak!



International Perfume Museum's gardens in Mougins,  jasmine fields.

Amber resins. Used in perfumes as a base note.

Immortale flower.  The flower never dries out and dies, very sturdy to rough conditions. Used in anti aging products nowadays. L'occitane has a series of it. I liked to imagine that it is hiding the secret of immortality within its leaves 

Absinthe. I first met here but drank it in Czech Republic.

Anise flower and the ones up are iris risomes. The root of iris flower is used in perfumery. Extracting the scent is a very laboring process, therefore perfumes having iris in are slightly more expensive then the others.  
At the times when taking a bath was  considered as luxury,  people poured iris powdered to their hair to avoid bad  smell.
 Chanel No.19 is an example of perfumes having iris.

Jasmines being extracted with "Cold Enfleurage" technique. 
Jasmine is picked up every morning at dawn, one by one with hands as it is a very delicate flower. After that, they are digged in a kind of gres and kept like that the whole day. Each 24 hours the flowers are replaced by new ones and finally the essence is extracted from the fat. 
Cold Enfleurage is an old technique, it is very laboring and can not answer the increasing demand. 
Therefore, using chemical solvents such as hexan is popular nowadays. 
 Prada has given the respect for it, naming the flower series with "Infusion" (Infusion Iris, Infusion Rose)

Distillation boilers and in the middle the serpantine to condensate the vapour to liquid. 

Christian Dior's early designs
Glass artwork is worth all



Apart from "cold enfleurage" there is also a technique called "hot enfleurage" Delicate flowers like jasmine, tuberose, muguet could be extracted with hot vapour, dripping their precious scents down with the woater.

After my Grasse tour, to put my feet a little bit back on the ground, i went to Cannes and Nice but honestly there was no way that i could be more fascinated after Grasse. I found Cannes very usual, a typical sea side city with a beach, luxury shops etc. Maybe the Cannes Festival would help me to like it more if i was on time. 

At Nice, with some local advices i had before, i had the chance to dine in a beautiful restaurant serving delicious sea food at reasonable prices.  (Cafe de Turin) 

Wines are also very good, my favourite was the rose.

Cafe De Turin - Nice

I'd like to lend you my memory but thats all for now.

Hope you enjoyed reading, i bet you'll enjoy more if you visit :)