Summer 21

It is late summer and the edge of evening. Fields flecked with gold stretch out towards the horizon. The heat of the day rises up from the parched earth; a warm breath against the paling blue of the wide, cloudless sky. The sun descends, burning between the old oak trees. An owl, parchment white, emerges from the shadows. As dusk deepens, the crescent moon brightens. 

The scent, held in this long dim before nightfall, is heady, rich and spiced. It carries with it traces of a verdant midsummer and the drier, deeper notes of the season’s end. It is layered and complex, belonging only to this time of year. For Summer 21, it is this scent we have sought to capture.

We began with the field and the warm, cracked earth. In recreating this we married nutmeg with vetiver; the dry, dusty sweetness of the nutmeg complimenting the woodiness of the vetiver. To add warmth and depth we introduced olibanum, with its peppery, incense-like facet, and benzoin siam, bringing a rounded, gently balsamic flavour. 

For the memory of midsummer, we turned to the citrus notes of bitter orange, lime and green mandarin. These full, zesty top notes cut through with a freshness that we softened with the quiet, floral notes of jasmine and neroli. While only faint, we included the herbal, culinary notes of coriander and basil, hinting at the green growth of the hedgerows.

Though these ingredients combined to capture a distinctive scene, we continued to search for something that might embody the amber glow of the evening - that soft, mellow haze that seems to fill the air. We found it in ‘Hierochloe alpina’, more commonly known as hay. Warm and sweet, with tobacco and almond undertones (it naturally contains coumarin), the hay brought the missing element.