Exploring the Heart of the Rose

At the live perfume days we start this session after lunch; by which time we have a number of defined scent words in our minds.

I always start the session in the same way. I present the class with a number of roses of different types, and I ask them to make a simple olfactory exploration of the scents. This is like an artist painting from real life. I encourage the smellers to close their eyes; to sniff the rose as if they were a curious child meeting a rose for the first time; and to draw upon their recently acquired vocabulary of scent words so that they can more easily detect the nuances of the rose – the basic rose themes along with hints of lemony or minty or woody or dewy or green or sultry or aldehydic or balsamic or fruity or sundry other osmical nuances.

You will be doing the sniffing in your home or office – so you must go to a flower shop and explore the roses. Alternatively, if you are having a perfume party at home with some friends; a collective perfume creation; why not ask each one to bring a favourite type of rose with them.

North of London there is a national rose garden which has virtually every type of rose known. There, in the summer, you can make a leisurely exploration of the manifold secrets of the rose scent. Enquire around about your region; perhaps there are some magnificent private or public rose gardens which you did not know about.

The rose experiment always works well. We start by simply sniffing and adoring the roses with our hearts; sucking in the olfactory pleasures, and not caring about the cold work of reason to come. Firstly, we honour the rose with our heart and not our head. You may even become aware that one kind of rose has a special scent appeal for you. After a session of heady heart-sniffing, we must change our emphasis. It is now the turn of our head, along with our heart, of course, because every aroma comes with its panoply* of hidden and not-so-hidden feelings.

We now use the check-list of scent words we have locked in our smell memories and also have written down in front of us. We now sniff, and with each sniff we look at our scent world list and we ask a simple question – is this note present or not ? There are frequently little cries of astonishment in the group as someone discovers in their rose, besides the rosiness; a never previously noticed but now distinct lemony aroma note or a definite hint of mintiness or a decidedly green character or a sensuous sultriness. Soon, the astonishing world of analytical nosing opens-up for everyone, and note after note is logged, together with the absences of other notes. It really is heady stuff, as you will find out; and it is especially pleasureable to be smelling with a friend or in a group, so that the pleasures can be shared and amplified; and you may even be astonished to find that someone other than yourself first notices the faint trail of an aroma note; but that once your attention has been alerted; now you too can definitely get that note too. Group sniffng is fun.

When this phase of sniffing is complete, we compare notes and make a log of the scent words used. Occasionally, a course is lasting for longer than a day and we then have the chance to try and do the difficult trick of making an estimate of the relative strength of each scent note. We would usually do this by