Bois de Jasmin courses: 20 posts

I’m going to teach a new perfumery course in France, April 18-22, 2018 (booking details via The Art of Perfume website.)

Who is this class for? Anyone interested in perfumery. Because we are trying to keep the class small, it offers lots of individual attention and guidance.  If you want to learn about perfume in a thorough manner, acquiring professional vocabulary and techniques, this is also the right class for you. Since it will take place in Burgundy, a region renowned for its wine, we will study how flavors and fragrances interact. In other words, if you want to deepen your appreciation of wine and aromas, this is the class for you.

Will we smell vintage perfumes? Yes, and more in my previous classes. I have several vintage gems to share that I haven’t had a chance to show before.

How does this class differ from the other Art of Perfume classes? The emphasis of this class is to help you build your own scent vocabulary and to help you understand the relationship between scents and flavors. It’s also going to be individually tailored to make sure that all participants leave with the type of practical knowledge that’s most important for them.

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The overview of our 2018 class and the description of our activities can be found here, Scents of the Burgundian Spring.

I have some news for you. I’m going to teach a new perfumery course in France next spring (April 18-21, 2018). Since it will take place in Burgundy, a region renowned for its wine, the three day course will reflect that. We will learn together about the aromatics used in perfumery and found in wine, practice sharpening our sense of smell and learn to take apart accords and recognize notes. We will also have an overview of perfume history in the form of some of the most iconic fragrances. At the same time, I will show you lost masterpieces, less well-known but equally fascinating blends and teach you a number of professional techniques for smelling, remembering scents and describing them. And we will certainly be enjoying plenty of good wine.

The course will be held in Château Le Sallay in Magny-Cours. It’s a Renaissance-era building, once the residence of the Counts of Nevers, that’s been restored as a 4 star hotel surrounded by a large park. It’s easily reached from Paris, and if you wanted to combine the course with a visit to the Loire Valley, it’s possible. 

Just like my previous two courses, this one is organized by Senses & Vacation. All of the details can be found via their website, The Art of Perfume. It also lists the program, accommodation details and much more.

The course program will be slightly different, but you can read about the course I taught in spring of 2017 here.

How to Book The Course: please go to The Art of Perfume website.

1st image by Anna Kozlova via Senses & Vacation, 2nd via Wiki-images, some rights reserved.

Here is a recap of the three days of our Art of Perfume course: on Day 1 we visited the Edmond Roudnitska garden and explored the International Perfume Museum in Grasse, on Day 2 we learned about perfumes that influenced fragrance history and more, and on Day 3 we applied our newly learned skills to practical exercises.

As I mentioned before, my course was designed with all of the rigor of a professional training program, keeping in mind our time limitations. It takes years to learn how to make a perfume, but one can acquire basic knowledge of raw materials and try simple exercises to see how they interact together. All of this not only helps deepen one’s knowledge of perfumery, but also makes one’s perceptions sharper.

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I already wrote about my most recent perfumery course, covering the first day of our activities, visiting the Edmond Roudnitska garden and exploring the International Perfume Museum in Grasse. Today I’m continuing with our second day, which covered perfume history and professional smelling techniques.

Whenever I hear the phrase “perfume history,” I think of the typical introductory chapter in books on fragrance that start with the Egyptians and the stuff researchers still find in the pyramids. Then a writer might continue with a short homage to the Romans, include a remark on the use of perfume by the bath fearing Europeans in the Middle Ages and with a clear conscience they skip to the brave new world of the 20th century and its Chanels and Guerlains. Perfume history is fascinating stuff, but why is it presented in such a dull manner? I want to do something different.

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What would you pack if you had to flee for your life? If you were Marie-Antoinette, you would commission a case that would allow you to write, sew, picnic, and perfume yourself with ease. At the International Perfume Museum (Musée International de la Parfumerie) in Grasse, you can see the very item made to the queen’s specifications before she fled to Varennes in 1791. Legend has it that she was given away by the scent of her rich perfume, but if this travel case is any indication, the royal couple didn’t travel light.

After we visited Edmond Roudnitska’s house as part of my Art of Perfume course, we headed to Grasse. Once upon a time, Grasse used to grow the bulk of the flowers used in the fragrance industry, but today it plays a mainly symbolic role. Its environs produce the famous rose de mai, jasmine, lavender and tuberose, but the combination of high real estate value, steep labor costs and climatic change has affected aromatic agriculture in the region. Nevertheless, it’s a charming town located in one of the most beautiful areas of Provence. It also boasts the best perfume museum in the world.

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