The Diary of a Nose Read Free Page A

products that few perfumers would dare use in their perfumes now, such as last residue forms of methyl ionone, hydroxycitronellal or lilial, all manufacturing by-products whose smells are difficult to reproduce identically. I used reproductions of natural musk, composed of disparate ingredients whose quality could not be assured with certainty, making the production of perfumes unreliable. Since then, products have been standardized, and there is less hapless tinkering taking place. Oddly, this standardization, which should be a rationalizing process, led to a degree of ‘waste’: even though they are not toxic, these by-products have now been eliminated because they cannot be standardized for production on an industrial scale.

    Messina, Friday 4 December 2009
    The unrefined smell
    We left early this morning to catch the ferry across the Strait of Messina to Villa San Giovanni in Calabria. We have a meeting with a farmer who produces unrefined essence of bergamot in the village of Condofuri. M. P. meets us in the courtyard of his home-cum-factory. To the left, the family home – which houses his children, their wives and his grandchildren – rises up over three stories. To the right, the factory, a building of the same height. Vilfredo R. has asked me, out of courtesy for his employees, to take photographs of outside the factory only. He is a short man with a square head, a tanned face dotted with liver spots, thick grey hair and direct, piercing black eyes. He is wearing worn, dark trousers of indeterminate color, and a navy blue quilted jacket of indeterminate age.
    M. P. greets us in his own language. I only understand one word in three. He proffers his hand, the firm hand of someone familiar with the land, then leaves us to go and talk to our guide. Long rambling discussions ensue several feet away. After quarter of an hour of negotiations, we are invited to see his machines and to smell the essence he produces. The smell manages to smother the impressive racket of the machines; it bowls me over, floods through me. In my work, I usually try to establish some distance from smells, the better to grasp them, to understand them, to smell ‘behind’ them, but here it penetrates me, I can’t get away from it, I let it wrap itself around me, let myself beclothed by it. It feels like the olfactory equivalent of a monochrome image. The pleasure of this unrefined smell is well and truly a physical experience, an experience in which thought is eclipsed.
    In the afternoon we visit the
giardini di bergamotti
, the bergamot orchard – in southern Italy orchards where citrus plants are grown are called
giardini
(gardens) – which gives me an opportunity for a whole new experience: smelling the fragrance given off by bergamot plants in December, a smell of fruit zest rather than flowers, as with orange trees. In the course of conversation, I learn the names of the different varieties of bergamot:
Femminello, Fantastico
and
Castagnaro
. A scant knowledge of the language suggests these names refer, respectively, to women, the spectacular and chestnuts; you need only look at the fruit to understand the names. I also learn that misshapen fruit is called
meraviglia
, marvel. This name delights me, particularly as these mistakes of nature are given pride of place on tables and sideboards because they are thought to have magical properties.

    Cabris, Monday 7 December 2009
    A pear, or the outline of a perfume
    I have returned to the workshop and my beloved phials. While I was away, I left experimental formulae on the theme of pears to be weighed up later. The young green top notes are very appealing. To the pear theme, I’ve added floral notes but without the heavy, narcotic characteristics typical of white flowers, and a chypre accord, a composition of patchouli with woody and labdanum notes, which should play like background music as the perfume develops. As I write these few words to describe the perfume, I realize I’m the only