Stories
How it is grown, harvested and made. The materials behind perfumery, explained by people who produce them.
How agarwood forms, and why most trees never make any
Oud is not wood. It is resin a tree makes after it is wounded and infected, in about one wild Aquilaria in ten, over twenty years or more.
3 min read
How vanilla is grown, and why it takes three years
An orchid, hand-pollinated one flower at a time, three years to a first pod. And a formulator ends up buying vanillin instead. Why we do.
4 min read
Get the Africa-Gulf-Asia sourcing brief
Raw materials, market, regulation and the actors worth watching: a digest, not a deluge of emails.