MITTI ATTAR - The scent of the first rain : the origin of Petrichor [High quality traditional Indian Attar]

An artisan produced mitti Attar of the highest quality; from India.

Whoever loves fragrances and hears first of the story behind the traditional mitti attar is bound to become very curious about it. So of course, I when I learned about it; I set myself to source some...

Keep seeking and you shall find.

.. but for years, I experienced poor renderings and oils of little interest (up to "anecdotical interest"), and I had almost crossed off mitti attar of my mind as wonderful storytelling not up to par with reality. 

In the end, it was just a symptom of the age, where most of the traditional perfume making in India is extinct, within a wider and wilder unregulated market where most products are adulterated if not straight away fakes. 

Skip away a few years, and I stumble upon a really good artisan, producer of a few only, all of remarkable quality. He doesn't offer hundred of things, and his attar selection is quite limited. That is because he works patiently, striving to keep the real quality of traditional Indian perfumery.

With rekindled hope, I decided to try his own mitti attar and it is simply exceptional. I have fallen in love with it and so have many of my clients  (while some don't relate or understand the fragrance, as it is something quite "different").

The genius idea behind mitti attar (and possibly a foundational act in conceptually driven perfumery) is to capture "the scent of the the parched earth, just after a first rainfall". Anyone who has been in central north India and experienced the moment, will know how magical and hard to describe this fragrance and exhilarating feeling.

Technically what happens is that the water infuses the dry earth which starts to open up and breathe, the water encounters millions of microscopic plant material imprisoned in the earth, and with the overall heat (heat behind one of the means making fragrant molecules are naturally travelling to our nostrils) a delicious smell emerges...

... the smell of baked earth; the note called petrichor in perfumery.

The method used is actually to find the perfect patch of the needed soil quality and collect it to make "cakes" according to traditional techniques, before a slow distillation in a base good Sandalwood (S. album) essential oil.

The result is mitti attar, literally "the perfume of the earth" (or, litt: " perfume the soil") 

 The Olfactive & Scentient experiences

Clay, organic life coming to life after the rain, sandalwood creates the most wonderful experience. It is refined, complex, singular, aristocratic

The Scentient experience is peaceful, focusing, invigorating, joyful, conductive to artistic practice.