The materials
Five materials.
Five places on a map.
Each edition is built on one material with a stated origin. The materials come from wherever they are best; so far that has meant India, which is where the house is. Where a synthetic exists we say so, and where we use the natural instead we say what it cost.
01
Petrichor · Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh
Mitti
Baked clay, packed into a copper still and steamed, the vapour caught in a base of sandalwood oil. What condenses is petrichor — the smell of the first rain on hot ground. Kannauj has distilled it this way since the 1600s and no laboratory has reproduced it. It is the only material in the collection with no synthetic equivalent at any price.
Petrichor · Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh
02
Aquilaria agallocha · Upper Assam
Hindi oud
An unremarkable evergreen until it is wounded. Infected heartwood floods itself with a dark resin; that resin is agarwood, and distilled it is oud. The Assamese grade is less brashly animalic than the Gulf material and quieter as it dries. Most oud sold in fragrance is a reconstruction. This is the distillate.
Aquilaria agallocha · Upper Assam
03
Santalum album · Mysore, Karnataka
Mysore sandalwood
The grade the world measures sandal against — warm, creamy, close to milky, without the sourness of cheaper origins. It has been over-harvested to the point that most sandalwood in fragrance is now synthetic. We use the oil, which is most of the reason A.003 costs what it does.
Santalum album · Mysore, Karnataka
04
Crocus sativus · Pampore, Kashmir
Kashmir saffron
GI-certified stigma, hand-picked at first light and separated under a tin roof. Roughly a hundred and fifty flowers to a gram. On the plate saffron reads sweet; in a composition it does the opposite — dry, faintly metallic, almost leathered. Used by the hundredth of a percent.
Crocus sativus · Pampore, Kashmir
05
Jasminum sambac · Madurai, Tamil Nadu
Mogra
Jasmine sambac, picked after dark when the flower releases its full scent. Real jasmine absolute is among the costliest naturals in perfumery, which is why most white florals are built around a synthetic. The whole of A.005 is an argument for the flower.
Jasminum sambac · Madurai, Tamil Nadu
From material to bottle
Gathered at source. Clay dug before the rain, agarwood aged in the forest, stigma picked at first light.
Steam distillation in copper deg and bhapka over a wood fire. No thermometer; the still is read by the sound of the boil and the weight of the receiver.
Six to ten weeks in sealed steel, so the notes marry instead of merely mixing. Stated on every record in whole weeks.
Filled, capped and checked against a reference standard before it leaves New Delhi.