Mimosa, French perfume-makers' secret ingredient

This photo taken on February 7, 2013, shows Mimosa flowers in Tanneron, southern France. Mimosa flowers fade with the end of winter but a second life awaits them in the hands of perfume makers in Grasse, southern France, who value the flowers for their unique scent.

GRASSE, France: Like miniature pompoms bursting with colour and fragrance, mimosa flowers turn the hills around France’s perfume capital, Grasse, a golden yellow for a couple of fleeting weeks each year.

Though they fade fast — and must be processed as soon as they are  harvested — a second life awaits these harbingers of spring as a prized  ingredient in some of the world’s most coveted scents.
  
“Mimosa is still a perfumer’s mainstay,” says Sebastien Plan of Robertet, a  major international supplier of the raw ingredients that go into perfumes.
  
Mimosa’s heady fragrance, which enjoyed a heyday from the 1950s through the  ’70s, is used in tiny amounts today. Modern perfumes tend to be “subtler, with  a good, clean and smooth” effect, says Robertet.
  
Yet it can still “become a perfume’s secret ingredient,” he says.
  
“Mimosa has a fresh, floral, slightly powdery, almost honeyed aspect, which  blends with the green scent of the stems,” he adds, admitting a preference for  the stronger wild variety.
  
 From a harvest of around 40 tonnes of flowers, Robertet produces some 400  kilos (880 pounds) of a rock-like substance called “concrete” — which is in  turn purified into about 100 kilos of “absolute”.   

Jean-Pierre Roux, the boss of the Grasse perfumery Galimard, pays tribute  to this “symbol of the Grasse terroir” by distilling the flowers into a  refreshing cologne, popular with visitors who come to see the mimosas in bloom.
  
Grasse, situated on the French Riviera, has long been France’s perfume  capital. Fields of Provence roses and jasmine sprung up around the area in the  17th century when local tanners started scenting their leather products —  especially gloves — with fragrant floral oils, which are still used today to  make luxury perfumes such as Chanel No. 5.
  
Galimard’s perfumer Caroline de Boutiny admits that its mimosa scent is  more popular with older customers than with the young.
  
The strong mimosa absolute is little used in modern fragrances, but it can “lend weight to a composition with its honeyed and powdered notes”, she said.
  
Luxury perfume brands Kenzo and Guerlain use it for this quality in their  toilet waters, de Boutiny said.
    
The mimosa tree arrived in France from Australia in the mid-19th century as  a decorative plant for gardens and still forms a luxurious forest on the  Tanneron hills west of Grasse.
  
“Mimosa is like velvet,” says Gilbert Vial, an 85-year-old “mimosist” who  has never left the town of Tanneron.
  
This year, he said, the blossoms have only flowered for a brief period. To  lengthen the season, local mimosa growers first plant the mirandole variety,  which flowers in December and January, followed by the rustica and gaulois  varieties, which bloom in February and March.
  
Vial, whose family has sold mimosa bouquets for three generations, has  little time for the secret world of the perfume industry. These days he can no  longer even discern the scent of mimosa,  even as it pervades his small village  shop.
  
Yet the declining use of the flowers in the fragrance industry is being  felt here. Vial’s 60-year-old son is the last in line to harvest the steep  slopes of the family’s six hectares (15 acres).

“Before the frost of 1956,  thirty families grew mimosa in Tanneron. Today there are just three or four of  us,” he said.
  
Many perfumers prefer synthetic ingredients that closely resemble mimosa  and are less onerous to produce.
  
Globalisation of production has also affected French growers, who now face  competition from cheaper producers in far-flung countries.
  
Even some Grasse suppliers, like Robertet, today import cheaper mimosa “concrete” from Indian suppliers.
  
“Previously, six train cars left five days a week from Cannes heading to  England,” Vial said. “Then, there was no other source of flowers in winter. Nowadays, flowers arrive from all over the world.