Perfumes are always a popular gift at Christmas, but there are many mysteries around what exactly goes into those shiny bottles stocked on shelves around the globe.
As the head of natural ingredient procurement at Swiss fragrance giant Firmenich, Dominique Roques has explored the most remote parts of the world sourcing rare ingredients for prestigious fragrance houses.
"It's a sort of ongoing and never-ending journey to go there and to make sure that the products do not disappear. Some of them have been as old as 5,000 years," he tells ABC RN's Late Night Live.
His new book In Search of Perfumes chronicles his travels over the last 30 years, seeking out diverse resins, seeds, and flowers, and demystifying the secrets of the fragrance industry.
'Library of smells'
Unlike the farmers and workers on the ground, Roques doesn't collect perfume ingredients in their raw state.
Instead, he sources essential oils, extracts and resinoids from countries such as Peru, Egypt, Somalia, Madagascar, and Iran.
Once he has sourced these natural ingredients, the perfumer — also known as the 'nose' — steps in to create their olfactory masterpieces.
It's a curious profession. Those wanting to go into the business of creating perfumes often study for three or five years, and need to memorise hundreds of scent notes.
"Once they have memorised this library of smells, the most talented will emerge as the ones capable to do the most incredible creations from their own library. And these are the master perfumers," Roques says.
Humans have long wondered how to capture – and recreate – some of nature's most beautiful scents.
"How can I capture the smell of the cedar of Lebanon, the smell of the rose of Shiraz?" he says.
"Gradually we've invented processes [such as] waters, perfume fats, and then finally, essential oils, and extracts. So, it's been a long journey."
Communicating with the gods
Sourcing natural ingredients has led Roques to the most picturesque of landscapes.
For example, in southern Spain, he saw the Andalusian hills sprinkled with what looked like white fat snowflakes, as if a storm had dusted the fields in snow.
These poppy-like flowers grow on shrubs called labdanum, which is an essential ingredient in many perfumes.
"It's one of the most ancient ingredients," Roques says, adding that labdanum was mentioned in the Bible.
"The shepherds around the Mediterranean used to take their sheep through these labdanum fields and the gum [of the flowers] is so sticky, so strong, that [the sheep] would end the day with their wool covered [with] this labdanum gum.
"The shepherds would then come in the evening around their fires to recover these balls of labdanum gum, which were incredibly fragrant."
The ancient Egyptians were also "crazy about perfume".
They are said to have used it to communicate with the gods, which is why the intoxicating scents of myrrh, frankincense, and sandalwood have wafted through the temples of different religions through the ages.
"[The ancient Egyptians] were very creative to the point of also using myrrh in their recipe to mummify the pharaohs," he says.
The use of rose in fine fragrances can be traced back to ancient times, to eighth century Persia in Shiraz, in southern Iran.
"The Persians then were very smart because they quickly found the way to perfume water, and to do what we call rose water. Their caravans conveyed and sold rosewater throughout the world," he says.
Making rose oil requires a lot of work. Roques explains that the distillers need one million rose flowers to make just one kilo of rose oil.
"It starts in an immensity of fields, forests, deserts, where hundreds of thousands of humbled people, unknown people, each picking a flower, taking pieces of bark or whatever, is constructing what is going to [be condensed] in an incredible way."
The push for ethical sourcing
While it sounds romantic, the fragrance industry is big business, and concerns have been raised about working conditions of local farmers and other workers, Roques explains.
For example, in Madagascar, which is home to 80 per cent of the world's sources of vanilla, farmers live exactly as they lived a hundred years ago, he says.
"Madagascar is both majestic beauty and absolute tragedy," he says.
The island nation has experienced immense political instability since it gained independence from France in 1960.
And vanilla has soared to prices higher than silver because of high demand and short supply, as well as crop failures, cyclones and theft.
But when there is no vanilla harvest, it can impact those who depend on it for their livelihood.
"They're left alone. There's no water in the villages. There's of course, no health[care], there's barely schools, they're completely abandoned and it's very hard really to witness this situation," he says.
Feeling uncomfortable about poverty-stricken workers who harvest these ingredients for luxury products is not enough, he says.
"I think for a long time the perfume industry wanted to hide everything that happened before the bottle, because they wanted to keep their secrets, their sources, everything," he says.
Now that's beginning to change, he says.
"The consumer of today wants transparency. They want to be sure that no harm is done to the children in Madagascar [for example]," he says.
"And [they] want to be sure that the ingredients that are in the bottle that [they are] going to pay quite a large sum of money for is ethical. And this is great."
RN in your inbox
Get more stories that go beyond the news cycle with our weekly newsletter.
