BELA ATTAR - Jasmine sambac flowers distilled into a Sandalwood oil base (deg-bhakpa distillation)

Top-tier artisan traditional deg-bhakpa distillation of Jasminum sambac flowers into a Sandalwood oil base.

The attar gives a pure blissful sambac experience.

High-quality natural Jasmine Sambac smells lush, intensely concentrated, and multi-layered, moving from an electric green opening to a deeply narcotic, honeyed, and fruity heart

Unlike sweeter or powdery synthetic jasmins, a pure natural sambac opens with a crisp, dewy snap, almost evoking crushed-leaf green but with the lushness of a flower.

It then very slowly evolves heavily into ripe, juicy, and sun-warmed fruit tones.

The natural indole content gives high-quality natural jasmine a warm, silghtly animalic and earthy  breath-like sensuality over the transition towards the dry down, which 

The dry down softens into a rich, narcotic, honey-sweet, and persistent aura that lingers for a day or more

Cultural insights

In India, Jasmine sambac is known under different names : bela, motia (or motiya), and mogra.

Jasmin sambac is a very important plant in South and Southeast Asia

The word Sambac, comes from champaca an ubiqutituous sanskrit word denoting the headniness of numerous flowers (magnolia, plumeria, etc.)

The young flower buds of J. sambac are the white flower you see in all the fresh devotional flower garlands in Southern India and many other places). It is used ritually but is also sometimes worn fresh in bracelets, or hair braid (in grand style during weddings), for an ephemeral fragrant jewellery.

Considered sattvik, it is an auspicious devtional offering,  associated with, among others, Goddess sarasvati, goddess of knowledge, learning, wisdom (poetry & music). Sattva is the quality of balance, harmony, goodness, purity, universalizing, holistic, constructive, creative, building, positive attitude, luminous, serenity, being-ness, peaceful, virtuous

I saw the lord, white as jasmine,
and broke wide open
He bartered my heart, looted my flesh,
claimed as tribute my pleasure,
took overall of me.
I’m the woman of love
for my lord, white as jasmine.

Akka Mahadevi (1130-1160)
Female poet, saint and mystic from South India

But the plant has also long and important associations with sensual love, with the god Kama, the god of pleasure and with the mysteries of the night.

Women bathed in sandalwood scents,
Flashing antelope eyes,
Arbours of fountains, flowers and moonlight,
A terrace swept with breeze of flowering jasmine
In summer they stimulate
Love and love-god himself.

Bhartrihari (c. 450-510 CE)
One of the most original philosophers of language and religion in ancient India