Free A Rather Charming Invitation by C. A. Belmond Page B

stop, get out and explore the old streets on foot, but the driver was steering the car away from the shops, museums and churches, making several turns down side streets, so that he could approach a parking lot at the rear of the old factory that belonged to Oncle Philippe. The car stopped at the back door, and I slid out first, followed by Oncle Philippe.
    A brisk, alert-eyed woman in a white coat, carrying a clipboard, greeted us, ready to guide our private tour. Oncle Philippe introduced her as Lisette, one of the managers. Although the factory was technically closed today, some of the workers had come just to help in this tour, presided over by Oncle Philippe himself, which made it a very special day indeed. From the moment we entered the factory, his employees snapped to attention and greeted him with genuine warmth and excitement.
    “I am what you might call ‘semi-retired’,” he explained with a smile, aware of his celebrity status.
    “Theeze way,” Lisette said politely as she led us past the foyer. The factory was a series of cavernous, echoing, high-ceilinged rooms with no windows, and various big machines, each operated by an employee who neither glanced up nor spoke to us unless Lisette addressed him. “First, we have to get the flowers and herbs, many of which we still grow and pick from our own fields,” she said as she began a narrative of the process of perfume-making. “Only about thirty years ago, there were still thousands of flower growers in this area, but now it’s down to less than a hundred fifty growers.”
    “So we are a vanishing species,” Oncle Philippe said, shaking his head. “We go the way of the dodo.”
    “We grow many flowers, particularly roses and jasmine,” Lisette continued. “These require experts to pick them, and we like to get them super-fresh, within an hour. They are here.” She pointed to big burlap sacks on the floor, which had flower petals and herbs that were in various stages of drying or storage. “Our task is to extract the fragrance from the flower petals,” Lisette explained. “The oldest method is ‘expression’ or cold- pressing, but nowadays we only use this method for oranges and lemons, because they have so much oil in their peels.” Oncle Philippe pressed the palms of his hands together.
    “Like olives for olive oil?” I said.
    He beamed at me. “Précisément.”
    We moved through another room, full of big copper and stainless steel vats with long, old-fashioned curling pipes and funnels protruding from them. Lisette explained that this was the method of distillation, or steaming out the fragrance. Then, in the next room, we paused in front of stacks of mysterious wooden trays that seemed to go up to the ceiling.
    Lisette said with a flourish, “But now, you see the method that was developed here in Grasse. It is called enfleurage . Here, fresh flower petals are put into odorless animal fats, which absorb the fragrance from the flowers.”
    She pulled out a tray made of glass and wood, containing a smooth, thick layer of fat, topped with orderly rows of whole flowers looking like delicate butterflies who’d gotten their spread wings trapped in the waxy substance. “Fats that have fully absorbed the fragrance are known as pommade , which is then soaked in alcohol to extract the scent from the fat.”
    As we left the room Oncle Philippe said with a smile, “But, afterwards, the remaining fats still have some fragrance left in them, so what do we do with that?”
    “Soap?” I guessed delightedly. He nodded, and we entered another room, where a very big, elaborate machine cranked out wide tubes of soap, as if it were a giant toothpaste tube. A conveyor belt circled it, loaded with egg-shaped soaps in Easter colors, packed in neat little rows in cartons.
    “ Enfleurage is time-consuming,” Lisette concluded. “It takes months. That’s why so many of today’s perfumers use chemical solvents instead, which requires only a few