Spring 24

In sheds and under cloches, closed off from the light and frost, something very special grows from midwinter into early spring. Bright pink, sour-sweet forced rhubarb, delicate and fine. 

We have long wanted to bottle this harvest. But rhubarb is one of those plants which has no fragrant oil to extract - so in trying to replicate its scent, we needed to create a new accord that would blend with our light springtime palette of citrus, florals and spices. Together with Elodie, our nose, we considered rhubarb’s aspects.

First, its tartness - that sour zing that is so distinctive. For this we looked to citruses: bitter orange, bergamot and grapefruit. Bergamot’s florality and the orange’s bitter edge took us part of the way there, but it was grapefruit’s herbaceous acidity that touched on the acute sharpness we were looking for. 

Onto our citrus we layered timut pepper, a bright note that fizzes and sparkles, and a touch of clean, fruity buchu. 

But rhubarb is also sweet, and this is the more pronounced in forced varieties, inseparable from thoughts of crumbles and tarts, sugar crystals clinging to pink stems. For this we used davana, a fragrant herb with an elusive scent, said to smell completely different on each person who wears it - but always with a syrupy, jam-like tone, just what we needed.

And finally we came to the earth in which the rhubarb is grown. Here we reached for ginger for its dry spice, and paired it with pencil-like red cedar. 

The finishing touch was our beautiful Haitian vetiver, with the addition of a new form of the oil. This season we fractionated our vetiver, separating the oil into parts. This allows us to remove those facets that are less beautiful - leaving a pure scent reminiscent of the first green shoots of spring.