The patchouli you think you know

Patchouli carries a reputation: the seventies, incense shops, a stubborn smell nobody chose. That image comes from a raw material, poorly distilled, used in excess. Today's patchouli has almost nothing to do with it.

Fractionated and purified, it loses the aggressive camphor and earth. What remains is a dark depth, faintly cocoa-like, which no longer smells of a shop but of matter. It is one of the few ingredients able to give a composition weight without making it heavy, and one of the most persistent there is.

It is not patchouli that aged badly. It is the idea people have of it.

In ENCENS it is what anchors the smoke. Cardamom and green tea open dry, incense and oud hold the heart, patchouli and blond tobacco keep the warmth in shadow. Nine in the evening: the light goes, the warmth stays.

If you think you dislike it, there is a fair chance you have never smelled this one.