News of the lavender harvest

 

 

The lavender cutting has begun. When the wind catches the fields, warm gusts of scent rise into the air. And when the harvest is in, and distillation begins the other side of the hill from our terrace, the fragrance of lavender will get stronger.

 

I took these photos with a zoom lens from the track that leads to our property, when the crop was still blooming. We're not as close as it looks, but imagine what it would look and smell like to live in the hamlet with a vista like that sea of lavender!

"Marthe went to live with the Mussets at the farmhouse surrounded by lavender fields halfway between the plateau and the town." 

                       from The Lavender Field, part II of The Sea Garden

       "Iris pulled off the wrapping. It was a bottle of perfume: a voluptuous lavender scent with the label Distillerie Musset, Manosque.

          ‘Was there a message?’ she asked, desperately trying to damp down her hopes.

          ‘No card, Miss. But the gentleman who brought it did say something.’

          ‘Yes?’

         ‘This is from Xavier.’"

                               from A Shadow Life, part III of The Sea Garden

 

In the novel, the unexpected gift is wrapped in a tatty Francs-Tireurs propaganda sheet on which Iris’s name was scrawled. Today, the newspaper might be La Provence, on which the lavender harvest was front page news the other day: the "blue gold of Provence".

 

 

And the feature on the inside pages actually shows the present day harvest on the Valensole plateau, close to the location of my fictional farmhouse belonging to the Musset family. The rest of the caption reads: '...where the lavender fields spread out as far as the eye can see'. When there's such dreadful news in so many national newspapers, the sense of tradition and continuity is as comforting as the scent of lavender itself.

 

 

The industry is nothing like as large-scale around our way, but I wrote a post about the tiny Distillerie les Coulets, close by, a few years ago before The Lantern was published. You can find it here: The lavender distillery.



Agua Lavanda

The parcel arrived a few days ago. A surprisingly large box, and buried in green plastic bubbles inside, the bottle of Antonio Puig’s fabled Agua Lavanda.

I knew it came in a plastic bottle, that this is a fragrance splashed on daily with abandon in Spanish bathrooms by both men and women. At £7.50 plus p&p this is not by any means an expensive purchase. But the size of it – the size of a wine bottle! And so, the moment of truth…could the scent possibly live up to expectations?

The answer is a resounding yes. Forget any ideas that cheap lavender scent will be thin, sharp and unpleasant (as, I’m sorry to say, too many English lavenders are). This is sweet and mellow from the first contact with your skin, and surprisingly deep. Its advocates are right when they say that the balance of the different elements is perfect: the dominant note is sweet lavender but the presence of rosemary, bergamot and geranium give it some zest too. There’s a slight zing of ginger too, at least that’s what the chemistry smells like to me.

Then, after ten minutes or so, the base notes of tonka (vanilla), cedarwood, moss and a tiny hint of musk begin to assert themselves. From then on it’s fresh and clean, but slightly dreamy too, redolent of the fields and hills of the Catalan region where it was first made.

From what I read, Agua Lavanda has been part of Spanish life for more than seventy years. For that to happen, the perfumier has to achieve a special alchemy, a magical element. If that’s there, the perfume will grow ever more powerfully down the years, in part due to the sense of history surrounding it. Imagine all the sensory memories it carries, for so many people.

So yes, too, to the notion that Agua Lavanda could be a real Lavande de Nuit. Not in every element of scent, but in the sense that it is a perfume made of the simple country fragrances of southern Europe, so beautifully made that it has never gone out of fashion and has captured the imagination of generations. Coincidentally, and yet crucially, it was created near Barcelona in 1940 when the war in Europe and the political situation in Spain necessitated manufacturing companies to be self-sufficient in the raw materials they used – just like my Distillerie Musset in Provence.

I couldn’t resist an experiment though. I decanted some Agua Lavanda into an old Annick Goutal spray bottle and added just a few drops of Hypnôse by Lancôme which I thought might bring some bright white flowers into the mix, along with vetiver and more woody vanilla. Then – very, very carefully as it’s so overpowering – I squeezed a tiny drop of Serge Luten’s Un Bois Vanille onto my arm to get the vital smoky element I was looking for and then sprayed the mix into that. Five minutes later, I think I came very close to smelling the fictional Lavande de Nuit.

Lavender country

The summer I was fifteen I went up towards the mountains for the lavender harvest. It was Marthe’s idea, she who persuaded our parents to let me go to see for myself how the ridged uplands had been transformed into purple carpets where the scent was born.

                                                             from The Lantern

The lavender harvest will begin in the next few weeks, so the end of July is the perfect time to see fields of purple. As the hills rise into mountains, the checkerboards of colour are grow more dense against the green and pale stone. The warmer the day, the more heavily the air is perfumed.



Ask anyone about lavender, and the chances are they won’t be able to give you a description of its aroma. But more often than not, they can give you some visual reference. Lavender is color, waving fields of purple, rich blues and faded mauve. It is the essence of blue and of the warm winds of summer, opulent against the yellow of the cornfield, mysteriously shadowed under the olives that are sometimes planted as its companion.

These fields are in Sault, in the great lavender-producing area of the north-west of Provence. This small town, built on a rocky outcrop overlooking the narrow plateau where the crops grow, seems almost entirely dedicated to its industry. Even the shutters and doors of many of the buildings are painted mauve:

Local produce in the butcher's shop includes pork with lavender honey:

There are lavender biscuits, and lavender teas...

And just look at the sumptuous purple of this tablecloth:

And shops entirely devoted to lavender and sunshine...