What do the fragrances in the Aqua Allegoria Harvest Collection smell like? The short answer would be to say that they trap the scents of untouched nature. The longest would require counting the trips of Guerlain’s perfumer explorers to the gardens of Grasse where ethical roses are harvested, or their work in the orchards of Calabria where Marzolo mandarins are picked just before they reach their ripeness, or their raid on the Guerlain hives, also in Calabria, where one of the purest honey extracts in the world comes from.
Everything is very well thought out in the creation of this collection that is inspired by a porous idea: the world is our garden. Clean and extraordinary raw materials are the soul of Nerolia Vetiver, Mandarine Basilic and Rosa Rossa, the three fragrances in this collection.
Since 1999 Guerlain has aspired only to capture the surprising aromas of nature. Difficult and ambitious mission. This has been the inspiration for Aqua Allegoria since its origins, a collection with simple and refined olfactory codes. As elegance should be.
Guerlain’s explorer perfumers go through the best gardens in the world to convert its natural, free and diverse aroma into elegant and joyful fragrances that respect Guerlain’s commitment to the planet’s biodiversity. When a bottle from the Harvest collection is opened, memory shoots up, memories of childhood summers, houses in the country, walks through humid and silent forests.
Harvest’s pure aromas are achieved with excellent raw materials. Behind its almost exclusive vintages are years of solid relationships cultivated by Guerlain with the best producers in the world, from Calabria to Grasse. The ingredients of its fragrances are of natural origin up to 95%.
Everything in this collection is a powerful symbol of Guerlain’s commitment to sustainability: the emblematic Aqua Allegoria bee bottle is now made entirely in France with 15% recycled glass, in its laboratories the formulas are worked with alcohol from beets sourced organically grown, and the campaign, starring Yann Arthus-Bertrand, was shot with a minimal carbon footprint.
Since 2021 Guerlain is a member of UEBT (Union for Ethical BioTrade), a non-profit, non-governmental organization that establishes good ethical sourcing practices. Guerlain’s commitment is to evaluate the 40 supply chains of its most emblematic ingredients. The Harvest Aqua Allegoria collection is a firm step on the essential path of sustainability.
If we open a bottle and close our eyes we can almost hear the buzzing of bees looking for nectar among the small white flowers of the orange trees on the Ionian coast of Calabria. Says the perfumer Delphine Jelk, creator of the fragrance, who was inspired by the magical moment in which the bee meets the orange blossom. Jelk decided that this fragrance would be the neroli party, and she intertwined the citrus notes of flowers with an exclusive honey extract from the French house. With innovative technology, it was possible to capture for the first time the aromatic molecules of orange blossom honey from Guerlain’s hives, a smell that only existed in nature. Bees, flowers and perfumer Delphine Jelk could sign this new and perfect fragrance.
Jelk added the new honey note in generous doses to the fragrance, a bold idea that brings a new consistency to the Eau de Toilette. After the sweetness of honey, neroli emerges subtle and discreet. At the heart of the fragrance are fig chords with a warm and fluffy texture, which are combined with the base notes of honey, citrus and vetiver. An interesting fragrance.
Thierry Wasser, Guerlain’s master perfumer, knows that Rosa Rossa is harvested at dawn. Neither before nor after. He has learned this from the Grasse producers whom he knows first-hand. At dawn the flowers, which have opened during the early morning, are wet with dew and give off their best aroma. It is time to enter the field and, using the same technique as centuries ago: separating each flower from its stem with a snap, harvest the best rose in the world, which will be the raw material of the Harvest fragrance dedicated to the jewel of Grasse: the rosy rose
To dilute the perfume concentrate, an exclusive organic rose water from Grasse, made from the distillation of the Centrifolia rose, is used instead of purified water. This decision, which seems small, is definitive in the audacity and realism of this olfactory composition, which manages to bottle the smell left by the dew on the petals first thing in the morning.
The complexity of the fragrance becomes evident throughout the day, when its different facets emerge. In a bottle are all the faces of the freshly cut rose: its acidity, its density when it is touched by the sun’s rays, and its intensity to embrace the skin at the end of the day. A combination of Bulgarian rose inflections, Turkish rose accents, and facets of sandalwood and musk.
Guerlain has been working with the same producer of Marzolo mandarins for three generations. A delicate fruit that reaches its best olfactory moment just before ripening. A secret known to the longtime producers of Calabria with whom Guerlain has built working relationships and complicity for several decades.
The powerful sweet and sour smell of Harvest Mandarine Basilic is achieved by picking the fruits in March. Guerlain perfumers observed that since November the tangerine peel, still green, gave off a slightly bitter odor. They found it sophisticated and interesting. Perfumer Delphine Jelk managed to catch the sudden burst of fruit before the sun turned it into a sugary mandarin. This Marzolo mandarin is dramatic and has character. In the body of the fragrance, the fruit stands out, protagonist and vital, and is loved by the fresh essences of basil. It is addictive, exhilarating, bittersweet. Hard to define.
Its elaboration is almost handmade, the mandarins pass from the tree to the two sfumatrice machines
