Grasse, the Perfume Capital: Flowers, Skills and UNESCO Status

Grasse, a hill town some 20 km inland from the French Riviera, is where perfume plants have been grown and processed, and fragrances composed, since at least the sixteenth century. In 2018 UNESCO inscribed those skills on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, under a title that spells out all three: the cultivation of perfume plants, the knowledge and processing of natural raw materials, and the art of perfume composition.

If the name rings a bell, it may be from fiction: the final chapters of Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume are set in Grasse, and the town appears in the 2006 film of the book. The real story is about leather, flowers and know-how, and it's told here through the plants that made the town's name.

How did a tanning town become the perfume capital?

Grasse moved from leather to perfume, and UNESCO's entry for the town's perfume skills puts it in a single sentence:

Leather and scent met in the glove trade. The Grasse museums' guide to their perfume plant gardens lists the first plants used for perfume in Grasse in the sixteenth century: wild orange from the Italian Riviera, lavender, cassia from the mimosa family imported from Africa, myrtle and mastic. With that local production, the glovers-perfumers found the fragrant essences they needed on their doorstep. Wikipedia's article on Grasse adds that the king recognised the new corporation of "glovers perfumers" in 1614. Perfumery still keeps a whole family for that smell of tanned hide: the leather family of fragrances.

Which flowers are grown for perfume around Grasse?

From the seventeenth century, three plants became the emblems of Grasse perfumery: jasmine, rose and tuberose. The same museum page dates each arrival: jasmine came from India and appeared in the Grasse countryside around 1650; rose centifolia, smaller but more fragrant than the common pink rose, was grown there at the same time; tuberose came from Italy and was introduced to the Grasse region in 1670. Mimosa, native to Australia, completes the picture.

Rose centifolia, the May rose

Wikipedia's entry on Rosa × centifolia gives the rose of Grasse its English names, Provence rose, cabbage rose, May rose or Rose de Mai, and calls it particular to Grasse: it is widely grown for a fragrance described as clear and sweet with light notes of honey, and its flowers are harvested commercially for rose oil. The hybrid was developed by Dutch breeders between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, possibly earlier. The material has its own page: rose as a perfume note.

Jasmine

Jasmine reached the Grasse countryside around 1650, according to the museum, and the town still throws it a party. Wikipedia's article on Grasse describes the Fête du Jasmin at the beginning of August: decorated floats, jasmine garlands in the town centre and a fire truck filled with jasmine-infused water to spray on the crowds. The first was held on 3 and 4 August 1946. For the material, see the jasmine note page.

Tuberose

Wikipedia's article on the tuberose traces it to central and southern Mexico and says it is no longer found in the wild, probably because the Aztecs domesticated it. In France it found a royal admirer: Louis XIV had tuberoses planted in the hundreds in the flower beds of the Grand Trianon at Versailles, so that the scent was overpowering. Its perfume side lives on the tuberose note page.

Mimosa

Mimosa, or Acacia dealbata, is the silver wattle of south-eastern Australia, now naturalised around the Mediterranean from Portugal to Greece and from Morocco to Israel. Its flower essence, called mimosa or, in older texts, cassie, is used in perfumes. Wikipedia's article on Grasse names wild mimosa among the rare scents of the area, with lavender, myrtle, jasmine, rose and orange blossom, that won the town its title of perfume capital. You'll find the material on the mimosa note page.

What did UNESCO inscribe in 2018?

UNESCO inscribed three linked skills: growing perfume plants, knowing and processing natural raw materials, and composing perfume. The entry says the practice brings together a wide range of communities and groups under the Association du Patrimoine Vivant du Pays de Grasse, the Living Heritage Association of the Region of Grasse.

Growing perfume plants draws on knowledge of soil, weather, biology, plant physiology and horticulture, as well as specific techniques such as extraction and hydraulic distillation. The people of Grasse made those techniques their own and helped improve them; the class on how fragrance is extracted, from steam to supercritical CO2 explains each method. Composition, the third skill, calls for imagination, memory and creativity on top of technique.

UNESCO also notes how the knowledge travels: mostly informally, through a long learning process that still takes place mainly in perfumeries, although recent decades have brought growing interest in formal teaching. Perfume forges social bonds in the area and provides an important source of seasonal work.

What does the International Perfume Museum hold?

The International Perfume Museum in Grasse covers the history of fragrance from every angle: raw materials, manufacturing, industry, innovation, trade, design and uses. The history of the International Perfume Museum, told by the Grasse museums, calls it the first public collection in the world devoted to the perfume industry, organised around three themes: seduction, care and communication.

It began in 1918, when François Carnot, son of the President of the Republic, created a private museum in Grasse; a perfume section grew from 1921 thanks to donors. The International Perfume Museum itself was inaugurated in January 1989, the bicentenary year of French perfumery, and works started in 2006 doubled its floor space to 3,500 square metres. One detail links it to the history of bottles: Carnot is the man who introduced the perfumer François Coty to the glassmaker René Lalique. For the wider timeline, see the class on the history of perfume in verified milestones.

The museum also has gardens, its conservatory of perfume plants. The museum's presentation of its perfume plant gardens lists rose centifolia, jasmine, tuberose, lavender, geranium and orange blossom among the species grown there, set in the heart of fields of fragrant plants traditionally grown in the Grasse region and arranged by olfactory notes: citrus, floral, woody, spicy, fruity, musky.

What is left of the flower fields around Grasse?

Less than in the town's heyday. Wikipedia's article on Grasse notes that in the 1960s and 1970s large international groups gradually bought up local family factories and often moved production overseas, and that Grasse firms turned towards synthetic aromatics and food flavourings.

The museum gardens bear witness to that landscape. Their conservatory reproduces the fields of flowers as they were grown in the days of the perfume plant industry, and their primary purpose, the museums write, is to help conserve the diversity of species traditionally cultivated for perfumery. Visitors are invited to run their hands through the fragrant foliage and smell the flowers along the path.

Exercise: rebuild the Grasse palette at home

The idea is to smell, in historical order, the plants Grasse has grown, using whatever you can find in a garden, at a florist or in the baking aisle. You'll need paper smelling strips or strips of plain paper, a few small jars, a spoon and a notebook. Nothing goes on your skin.

1. The sixteenth century. An orange leaf or a strip of orange peel, a sprig of lavender: crush each one in a jar, smell, and write down three words.
2. The seventeenth century. A rose, and a jasmine if you can find one in a pot: crush a petal with the spoon in a jar rather than between your fingers, then smell from a little distance.
3. The flower and its water. Put a drop of rose water or orange flower water on a paper strip and compare it with the fresh flower, if you have one: what's missing, and what appears?
4. The mimosa. When mimosa is in season near you, hold a sprig close, then go back to the rose and notice what changes. In its native south-eastern Australia, it flowers from July to November.

Leave your paper strips out for a day and smell them again in the evening. You can share your palette in the Florals & Bouquets circle.