Heady scents fill the air around skillful pickers in southern India harvesting white jasmine buds, which will be pressed while still fresh and deliver their precious essence used by perfumers around the world.
Jasmine only emits its fragrance when it blooms at night, so it is essential that the buds are selected before they hatch.
“We know which one to pick,” says Malarkodi, who only gives one name, his expert fingers painstakingly grasping the buds. Then, she picks a few open flowers which she slips into her dark hair.
Refined, expressing grace and sensuality, jasmine flowers have been used for millennia in India to honor the gods.
In the ancient city of Madurai, in southern India, the ubiquitous jasmine flower attracts top perfumers. It is found in the bottles of “J’adore” by Dior and “Mon Guerlain” by Guerlain.
Connoisseurs say it’s one of the most subtle scents around.
But it’s also “one of the most expensive essences in the world,” says Raja Palaniswamy, director of Jasmine Concrete, which presses large quantities of fresh flowers for a few precious drops of intoxicatingly scented essence.
Harvesters earn about $1.50 a day for four to five kilos harvested, at the rate of some 4,000 buds per kilo.
Once picked, they are quickly shipped to market and sold for 200 to 2,000 rupees per kilo (2.40 to 24 dollars).
Madurai jasmine, an Asian variety whose scientific name is jasminum sambac, obtained a “geographical indication” from the World Intellectual Property Organization in 2013, claiming its “deep fragrance”.
“It’s exotic, it’s sexy, it’s rich, it’s lively,” Thierry Wasser, perfumer and “nose” of the French house Guerlain, told AFP as he visited a farm.
Jasmine has a “sweetness (…) and something floral that is immutable”, continues Mr. Wasser who gets his supplies from Mr. Palaniswamy’s company.
Besides Guerlain, the latter also says it supplies Bulgari, Dior and Lush, among others.
In Madurai, the white and shiny flower is everywhere in the houses, in the hair, or in the huge temple dating from the 14th century dedicated to the Hindu goddess Minakshi, guardian of the city.
Every evening, the Hindu faithful deliver as an offering to the goddess, supposed to join her husband Shiva, necklaces of fragrant jasmine flowers, during a great ceremony symbolizing the union.
“Once you understand that with this flower, it is love, fraternity, family and friendship that you are celebrating, then by inhaling its fragrance, it takes on another dimension”, explains Mr. Wasser.
“For me, this flower is the expression of love. Period.”
But extracting the essential oil requires a long process.
The pickers, on the other hand, hardly have the time to enjoy its pleasures, whether to honor their divinity, celebrate a wedding, attend a funeral, or treat themselves to a luxury perfume.
In a jasmine field on the outskirts of town, women meticulously move the branches of the shrub, searching for the perfect bud.
During the harvest season, the factory operates 24 hours a day. “As soon as (the jasmine) starts to flower, it emits its fragrance,” says Mr Palaniswamy.
Late at night, as the heady smell fills the air, the workers load the buds into the extractors.
The jasmine is then immersed in a solvent which absorbs the olfactory molecules, before being collected and boiled, producing a waxy paste called “concrete”.
The concrete is then treated with alcohol to rigorously eliminate the wax, and obtain a liquid called “the absolute”, which will enter into the composition of perfumes.
Some 700 kg of jasmine flowers are needed to produce a single liter of essential oil, which sells for around $4,200, according to Palaniswamy.
But Amsavalli Karuppuswamy has a stand in front of the flower market, where she makes and sells garlands and necklaces of jasmine flowers.
“Fragrances are not worth the fresh flowers of jasmine, she says, nothing can equal the true fragrance of jasmine”.
16/08/2023 12:32:08 – Madurai (Inde) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
