Blending your own perfume in Grasse

What it is

Grasse, in the hills behind Cannes, began as a town of leather tanners who scented their gloves, and by the eighteenth century it lived from perfume. Its skills in growing perfume plants, processing them and composing scents are on UNESCO's list of intangible heritage. The historic houses, Fragonard, Molinard and Galimard among them, run workshops where a guide explains top, heart and base notes and you blend a small bottle of your own. Around the town a few farms still grow the May rose, picked at dawn in May, and jasmine, picked from August. The International Perfume Museum fills in the history.

Before you go

• Book the workshop ahead, and allow one to two hours.
• Do not wear scent that day. It confuses your nose.
• Come in May or in late summer if you want to see flowers harvested as well.

The flowers you will see

Cabbage roseA highly scented old rose grown for perfume and gardens

Also part of it, and being written: Jasminum grandiflorum, Lavandula, Acacia dealbata.

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GrasseFrench Riviera town famed for its perfume industry and flower fields

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