Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

 Originally published July 28, 2013 I was digging up some old photos for a writing project, and this one of Jasmine sambac Grand Duke of Tuscany is from 2005.  I used a thumbnail of it on the original naturalperfumery.com website that was launched that year.  The thumbnail is an ironic term here since it features my thumbnail!  What huge flowers from the Grand Duke!  Many are the size of small carnations, which they remind people of, due to their tightly-clustered petals.  The window to harvest this flower is small since they’re slow to ripen to the proper stage for harvesting, and then, boom, overnight, it seems, they start to turn brown. A gorgeous, intensely-fragrant slow-growing jasmine. So many of the white flowers produce an orangey-brown absolute or tincture, have you noticed that?  Jasmines and gardenias, Michelia, and lotus come to mind.  When I pop Michelia alba flowers into a tincture, the menstruum turns reddish-brown immediately!...

My gigantic plant of Jasmine sambac Duke of Tuscany is starting to bloom. This sambac is slow growing and has huge - for jasmine huge I should qualify - flowers about the size of a tiny carnation, full of tightly-packed petals and the most tender non-indolic jasmine scent ever. I just adore it! I just plucked the first blossom of the season from it today, and left one on for the birds and lizards to enjoy ;-) It's full of about-to-open buds, and I hope I have some to bring to the lunch tomorrow of the Miami NP crew so they can enjoy it. I coined the organoleptic term "tender" and I have to add that to the Aromatic Lexicon on the evaluation sheet my students use. So many of the home-grown jasmines I have become "tender" upon tincturing. Sigh. They're just so lovely, tender, powdery, soft, sweet and delicious. April and May are the big jasmine blooming months here in Miami, not August and September as they are in India and France. Don't know the reason fo...