At some point, nearly every gardener has paused over a flower and experienced an epiphany: If I could capture the scent of that jasmine in a bottle, I’d be a millionaire. The next day the petals are gone, and the aroma with them.
Thanks for the memories. See you
next year.
Andrine Olson, however, has a pickle jar in her refrigerator that holds the invigorating scent of jasmine blossoms from her overgrown garden. There are some 60 other scents, too, foraged and assembled from her yard on Vashon Island, Washington, overlooking the Puget Sound.
These tinctures are a highlight of Olson’s creations as a natural perfumer, making scents without any of the synthetic aromas used in commercial perfumery. Each solution comes from a laborious process of steeping plants in 190-proof alcohol, a drink that could drop a horse. Other flowers have been pressed into fats, like palm oil shortening, in an old-fangled process called enfleurage.
There’s a witch hazel tincture from the herb garden that smells curiously sweet, nothing like the drugstore astringents used to punish teenagers with spotty skin. A tincture of smoked clamshells, gathered from the seashore down the hill, recalls a pot of Lapsang Souchong tea. Or the smell of a lover’s T-shirt after a bonfire on the beach. Creating perfumes, soaps and deodorants from her 1.6-hectare grounds has not made Olson a millionaire. Or a thousandaire, for that matter. Which is too bad, because Olson, 47, left her career as a Seattle technical writer for the likes of Boeing and Microsoft, and she has started to worry about losing her home to foreclosure.
Frankly, she wouldn’t mind selling the house, a 93m2, “Band Aid-pink modular home” that she has come to think of as a beached houseboat. She had had a mind to scrap it after she moved to Vashon Island nine years ago. But first her library of antiquarian books took over the second bedroom, and then her perfuming kit colonized the kitchen. The house put down roots, and these days she lacks the energy to dislodge it.
▲Sampling some of the essential oils that go into natural perfumes couldn’t be easier — just look for an herb or a blossom in the garden.
▲The first ingredient is the plant. You may be wondering, should I tincture citrus leaves or citrus blossoms? Mint or rosemary? Rose petals or rose hips? The answer is yes.
▲Collect plant materials whenever their scent seems strongest and the leaves aren’t wet. “Clover drying” them — airing them out until they’re limp — helps reduce the water content, which is as destructive to a tincture as a maraschino cherry in a dry martini.
▲The next ingredient, obliteration-grade alcohol, may take a little creativity. Jeanne Rose, an author and teacher in the field of aromatherapy and natural perfumes, recommends organic neutral grape alcohol. It has a “fruity scent,” she said, a remarkable claim for a liquid that’s 190 proof. It costs about US$32 a liter.
▲The last two items are 930cm2 of fiberglass netting (available at most hardware stores) and a clean jar.
▲The rest of the process is straightforward. And repetitive. Drop the whole petals or leaves into the jar and pour in just enough alcohol to cover the top. Maybe slosh it around a little. Wait a day, then strain out the petals or leaves through the netting. The alcohol level will drop, but don’t pour more. Instead, add new, clover-dried petals. And more petals. And do it again. And again. And again.
▲Some tinctures take a half-dozen plant changes, some three dozen. And a typical natural perfume may contain five, 10 or even 20 different scents.
SOURCE: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
At the end of 2005, Olson suffered “a massive” heart attack — a blockage of the left anterior descending artery that doctors called “a widow-maker,” she said. She survived and decided that “it was time to do something different.”
Since she took up natural perfuming, Olson has discovered a fervent community of other souls exploring the craft. One of her mentors, Anya McCoy, 59, sells her original scents under the name Anya’s Garden (anyasgarden.com), and runs a Yahoo group devoted to natural perfuming. The subscription list has more than tripled since 2005, McCoy said, and currently numbers almost 2,000 members.
The great majority of these perfumers buy all their ingredients from natural scent companies, in stores or on the Web, and then blend them at home. But McCoy also uses a heady variety of homegrown scents from her lush garden in Miami Shores, Florida, a village just north of Miami.
The desire to smell good — without the aura of chemicals — did not seem to wane in the flop sweat of the recent economic panic. McCoy sells her creations at US$60 to US$125 for 15ml — not cheap. Yet “since 2007, I’d say my sales have increased 25 percent every year,” she said.
Mandy Aftel, who helped spur the modern natural perfumery movement with her 2001 book Essence and Alchemy, said she has “observed an absolute explosion
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