Travelogue meets memoir in this fascinating trot around the world in search of 17 of the world’s most precious ingredients that make up the majority of perfumes on the market.
Dominque Roques is a master sourcer of natural ingredients like rose, vanilla, vetiver, Peru balsam, and frankincense. Each chapter is dedicated to a different country and ingredient: Laos for benzoin, Madagascar for vanilla, Venezuela for tonka bean, India for patchouli, and more. At each stop, Roques introduces the reader to the properties of the ingredient used in perfume and to the politics of the country and to the small communities of people responsible for cultivating these luxury materials.
This is a story of small farmers, tree tappers, distillers, and producers who source the best ingredients, often with traditional tools and techniques. And their counterparts in the luxury food and fragrance industry who create amazing scents based on those source materials. The book is travelogue, history lesson, political science, agriculture and climate science rolled into one.
It’s a beautiful book to listen to, and I must order a print copy for reference.