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The Ritual
There are five stages between a raw material and a sealed bottle. None of them can be hurried without the whole thing telling on you later.
01 — Source
Almost every material in the house is bought from someone we have met. Saffron in October, in Kashmir, from a co-operative whose threads we have been grading for eleven years. Bergamot from a single Calabrian grove. Oud through one dealer in Vientiane who will still refuse us a lot if he thinks the resin is young. It is slower, it is more expensive, and it is the only way we know to be sure of what is in the bottle.
02 — Distil
Heat is the enemy of a delicate top note. Our stills run cooler and longer than is commercially sensible — a bergamot run takes most of a day for a yield that a larger house would consider a rounding error. Each batch is logged, numbered and nosed against the previous one. When a distillation is not right, it does not go into anything.
03 — Blend
Ten litres at a time, on a balance accurate to a hundredth of a gram. The formula is written down, but the materials move — this year's rose is not last year's rose — so every batch is adjusted by nose before it is signed off. Two people have to agree before a batch is accepted.
04 — Rest
Maceration is the least glamorous part of the process and the one that decides whether a fragrance holds together. Freshly blended perfume smells like a list of its ingredients. Six weeks later it smells like one thing. There is no way to speed this up that does not cost you the thing you were making.
05 — Bottle
Chill-filtered once, filled, sealed and numbered by the same small team, in the same room. Every bottle carries its batch number on the base. If something is ever wrong with one, we can tell you what day it was made and who signed it off.
