Autumn 25

For Autumn 25, we invite you into our orchard. Here, honeyed light spills through leaves onto branches laden with apples and pears, sweetened by the warmth of the westering sun.

Hidden within each fruit are seeds, carrying the stories of new trees and blossoms and fruits - a small orchard’s worth inside each ripening globe.

Our own story begins with the apple. For this, we turned to crab apple, the ‘silver boughs’ of Irish mythology.* Our natural apple extract is made using the CO2 extraction process, from skins and pulp left over from cider making.

For pear, textured and aromatic, we searched far and wide for a natural way of producing its particular scent. We found it, of all places, in sugarcane - which can be fermented to isolate the ingredient that lends that floral, subtle note to pears.

Blended, our apple and pear called for a little more richness. So we strengthened the fruity-floral notes with blue chamomile, a striking indigo oil with a tang of apples running through. Cognac oil, derived from grapes, added the echo of windfalls.

Though we find our orchard in autumn, where the fruits are sweet and ripe, the land seems to whisper of seasons past - you can’t have an apple without blossom, nor blossom without buds, nor buds without a season of rest.

So we brought in blossom, the memory of spring. Creamy jasmine grandiflorum and neroli captured a nectar-sweet, green element - but to add depth we turned to night-flowering tuberose, a new ingredient for us. This lily-like scent lent the fragrance an unexpected dimension, a little hint of dessert - crème brûlée, or buttery apple crumble.

As ever, we can’t wait to hear your thoughts.

• A silver bough may open a path to Tír Na nÓg, the Otherworld.