Hay

As you might expect, hay absolute smells like fresh-cut hay, calling to mind the golden afternoons of late summer. It is sweet and evocative, with an almost jam-like undertone. Foin coupé (also known as 'new mown hay') fragrances, were popular around the turn of the twentieth century. But while hay absolute undoubtedly calls to mind a temperate harvest, the plant from which it is extracted is Arctic. The sweetgrass Hierochloe alpina grows wild on the circumpolar tundra, particularly on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, in Svalbard.