Grasse

This town nestled in the foothills of the French Alps became a perfume center in the 1500s. Three major houses ― Fragonard, Molinard and Galimard ― remain. Grasse is an anomaly among Provence's villages perchee in that it can be accessed by train.

From Vence your only options to get here are to walk, bike, drive or take the bus. I took the No. 651 Zou bus. Normally the trip would take over an hour, but because I was the only person to make the entire journey and the driver made almost no stops, it took 48 minutes.

Walking through an alley to visit the town's cathedral, which houses three paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, I was stunned to see this coffee-roasting ad. It appears to be from the 1950s and it is almost impossible to believe it has not been defaced more than it has.

There's another great "ghost sign" (or brick art, what have you) on Rue Jean Ossola.

The visitor to Grasse's pedestrianized historic center will encounter a parfumerie every 100 feet or so. 

For centuries the town's microclimate allowed for the prodigious cultivation of delicately scented flowers like rose, jasmine, tuberose, orange blossom and violet. Boilers like the one below obliterated their cells, releasing fragrant vapors that passed through cold water into a decantation vessel.

Shops and kitchens that sell and make big bricks of nut-crusted nougat are also everywhere. It is a produit regionaux that likely falls on the continuum of doughy, pastelike substances that, like soft cheeses, are prohibited in airplane cabins in any kind of usable quantity. T'ant pis.

The Grasse Cathedral was established sometime in the 1200s, wrecked by fire in the 18th century (as seemingly every structure in Europe was) and rebuilt. So intense was the 1795 blaze that the building's stone pillars burst. The similarly ancient City Hall next door is undergoing a lot of work.

The central nave is quite narrow, less than 25 feet.

As you enter, the Rubenses are along the wall on the right. From left, they depict the raising of the cross, St. Helena, and the crowning with thorns. 

As soon as this photo is snapped, a couple of ladies approach and announce they are going to lunch.

"Bon appetit."

"Non, monsieur. Nous fermons."

Well, hell. There are four statues by Baillet worth capturing, but out here in the French countryside, dejeuner has always been the day's most important meal and I can think of no counterargument.

Behind the church is a shady little square called Place du 24 Aout, marking the date when the city was liberated from German occupation in 1944.

There is a point de vue here overlooking the valley below.

From here you can see the Pont du Sud, now referred to as the Gustave Eiffel Bridge. As a railway bridge, it was mined with explosives by the Nazis, who intended to bring it down when Allied forces landed in Provence, but for some reason they never got around to it. It's now a road bridge.

It's a gorgeous town, not to be missed. This picture of Rue Tracastel turned out nicely.

Sitting at a perfumer's "organ" at the Galimard lab, a 40-minute walk outside town, I create my own perfume during a two-hour workshop. 

It may be true that 5 tons of magnolia blossoms are still used to produce 1 kilo of essential oil; I'm not sure. But today's perfume industry is undeniably ruled by chemistry, by synthetic substances that do not exist in nature. 

If you are looking for English toffee or banana notes, try benzyl acetate. Like the smell of cut grass? Hexenol and galbanum may be your compounds. 

A basket of fresh peaches? Aldehyde C14.

By spending a lot of time with these bottles, choices are winnowed. Vetiver smells like a hospital, tubereuse like the Exeter general store in the 1960s. 

Feve tonka? Vulcanized rubber. 

Pivoine is peppery and oceane is a like shot of pure oxygen. 

Air de provence smells like a bandaid, but one that you are grateful to apply because you're bleeding pretty bad.

A nice Polish lady in a lab coat makes helpful suggestions about how to proportion my base, heart and top notes but generally leaves me alone. 

Seeing me struggle to distinguish between my ambers and castoreums, she approaches.

"You are stuck. It happens. Go outside and stand on the sidewalk for five minutes. Reset your olfactory cache."

A McDonald's is across the street. Traffic whooshes by on Route de Pegomas. You have come 6,000 miles. Do not allow your final product to smell like a sachet of potpourri in an old lady's underwear drawer. You can do this.

Smell is difficult to discuss or write about. As a kid in Cleveland I registered my classmates' homes as having a "funny smell" (bad) but thought of my own Richmond Road house as being scentless (good). At that time (the 1960s), mass spectrometry, gas chromatography and other analytical tools were new. The modern perfume industry was just ramping up.

A bottle of my mom's Chanel No. 5 and the Hai Karate aftershave in my dad's medicine cabinet exposed me to what was up till then a foreign concept ― that some smells were formulated to be pleasant. 

I remember the relentless TV ad campaign for Revlon's Charlie in the mid-1970s. It was selling not just a perfume, but a lifestyle. We take this kind of thing for granted now, but back then it was jarringly novel.

My lab guide, Evelina, tells me to give my perfume a name. If you ever sign up for one of these classes, consider this step on the plane ride over; it's hard to be clever or profound on the clock. I think back to the Place du 24 Aout and settle on a date that is important to me.

The reason scents are a difficult topic is because they are fleeting and defy documentation. The best one can do is keep notes and be as descriptive as possible. Even then, good luck trying to summarize a smell. It's like trying to a fathom a poem after it has been translated into Braille.

But I'll give it a shot.

Top notes are verveine, pomme, mangue, poire sorbet and cardemome; middle notes are pivoine, air de Provence, oceane, prune and bambou; base notes are tubereuse, oppoponax, cedre ebene and feve tonka.

In other words, gibberish A, rigamarole B and gobbledygook C.

OK, how about a thought experiment? It is a sunny day but cool. You reach into your cedar chest for a cashmere cardigan, climb into your leather-seated convertible and take it to the tire shop for four new Dunlops. 

On the way to the beach you stop at a barbershop where the proprietor shaves the back of your neck for crisp, clean reset, applying a few drops of Pinaud-Clubman antiseptic. Removing the chair cloth from your shoulders with a flourish, he wishes you a good day. 

In your car at the water's edge, a tingling freshness blows off the ocean. On the dashboard, a paper plate holding a slice of raisin cake heats up in the sun.

Imagining this is my scent, a frisson of electricity shoots up my spine.

The Studio des Fragrances Galimard is at 5 Rte. de Pegomas.

But getting ready to leave in the lobby, I hold up my bottle of pale liquid, smelling only a jumbled mess. Evelina advises me to give it a month or two before using it "to let the molecules relax." 

She hands me a diplome d'eleve-parfumeur, which is corny but sweet. My perfume has a formula number that Galimard will keep on file. Should I wish to reorder it, they will make and ship it.

From Evelina, who is paid to lie one hundred times a day: "Don't worry, Pee-tair. It is a good one. Even great."

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