Travels In France, Part Two: Provence

The hillside town of Gordes. 

As a person who appreciates perfume you may have had the desire to travel to Paris, the home of so many famous perfume houses. On my trip to France we eventually ended up in Paris; I'll get to that in later posts, but today I want to talk about the delights of travel in Provence and how (minus the airfare) affordable it can be. Many of us that are fascinated by scent have cross interests such as the appreciation of food or wine, art, literature, or love of plants and nature. Maybe all of these are not your interests but I think that in general people who can appreciate the nuances of a fine perfume can also recognize the subtle differences between a glass of red wine or the beauty of a garden estate. Like painters, once you tune into the minutia of everyday life you can find beauty everywhere in the smallest details of life. In today's world full of discord it is important to feed your soul, and for me that means reminders of the good things that humankind is capable of, be that listening to a stringed quartet perform in an ancient church or enjoying a beautiful painting or even people-watching from a sidewalk cafe.

My husband and I started our travels in the Vaucluse and the Alpes De Haute Provence areas, and later explored some of the hill towns near Grasse. We booked lodging through a combination of AirBnB, Booking.com, and Hotels.com. Most of our rooms, while not luxurious, offered beautiful views and were less expensive than a stay at a U.S.-based chain hotel, which as we all know have a charm factor of zero. This was our view in Fontaine-De-Vaucluse, a small town straddling a crystal clear spring-fed river and in close proximity to the nearby lavender fields.

Good morning! The view from our small restaurant/B&B in Fontaine -De-Vaucluse. 

A riverside restaurant in Fontaine De Vaucluse

The Provencal town of Lourmarin. Photo www.moulindeloumarin.com

The towns in Provence have markets on varying days, so in theory one can find an available market somewhere not too distant if spending at least a couple of days in the area. Here are some of the sights from a Sunday market we visited in beautiful L'Isle-Sur-La-Sorgue.

Quaint hidden squares exist in many cities but I think the most beautiful were in Aix-en-Provence.

You can't help but stumble across a winery every few miles. There is Chateauneuf-de-Pape and Gigondas for reds, estates with whites and rose wines scattered throughout the south of Provence, the Bandol wine region near Cassis; the choices are endless. 

Photo by Jean-Louis-Zimmermann, flickr

We adopted the French manner of lunching while in Provence. Late lazy lunches in outdoor cafes in small hill top towns. The food was delectable and fresh and the sensible half carafes of house wine were cold, refreshing, and cheap as chips. We decided France keeps all their best wine for themselves, and why not? We almost always ordered house wines and they were always wonderful.

Salad Nicoise and Salad with Camerbert.

Platter Provencal with local delicacies.

If you are a history buff there are Roman ruins rivaling those found in Italy. If you love art you can see the areas that inspired famous painters such as Vincent Van Gogh or Cezanne and view some of their works in the small museums in the area. 

So what perfumes are reminiscent of the Provencal region? I've talked about lavender which is the most obvious. But there are other scents that remind me of my travels and here are just a small number of those.

Most of our accommodation were rooms above restaurants or rooms in small hotels but I wanted to stay in a chateau-type accommodation for the experience, however I didn't want to pay the steep prices most of these gorgeous-looking places would require. I found Chateau Valmousse not too far off the route we would be traveling and it was much more affordable, maybe because of its location which was a bit removed from the main tourist towns. It was quiet...I think we may have been the only guests....but lovely, and I enjoyed the tall windows opening up to views of the stately grounds and absorbing the rarefied air and experience of how a few lucky people lived two or three hundred years ago.

Chateau de Valmousse, near Aix en Provence.

A perfume that immediately came to mind to encapsulate in smell this experience is Vie de Chateau Nicolai Parfumeur. My bottle is the older version and today the Intense version is the only one available but I think they are much the same. The perfume opens with a honeyed green scent with bright notes of bergamot and grapefruit mixing with herbal notes of thyme and tarragon to add a piquant spark. It begins to morph from green grass to hay fields with mild touches of tobacco as notes of hay, vetiver, fern, tobacco, and musk make their appearance. The base notes of  oakmoss and patchouli ground the perfume, giving the scent a certain stateliness. It is classified as a Woody scent but to me it has aspects of the fougere and chypre types as well. Vie de Chateua does make me envision oak paneled walls in a library, shelves lined with books reaching three times my height; shutters lining long windows that open to bucolic views of a long tree lined driveway and expansive green grounds; a grand staircase rising gracefully to the private upper quarters; and surrounding fields echoing the gentle country life found in times past. This perfume is coming to the front of my cupboard as autumn approaches!

Vincent Van Gogh painting Noon:Rest After Work

This painting by Vincent Van Gogh, which I would later see in Musee d'Orsay in Paris, exemplifies the era and place brought to life in the perfumes mentioned above and below. Van Gogh lived and eventually died in the Provence area and to say it was a huge influence on his paintings is an understatement.

Chanel No 19 was named after Coco Chanel's birthday which was August 19, so happy birthday today, Coco! It was introduced in 1970 when she was 87 years old, a year before her death. Although the notes in this perfume are very different from the Nicolai Parfumeur Vie de Chateau, they are both reminiscent of French country life dotted with patchwork fields yellow with hay and green with grass. Chanel No 19 opens green, very green. It is the galbanum, which I love, bring it on! But it's also fuzzy with shady moss yet at the same time bright with shafts of light. This is the magic of chypre-like perfumes, and although Chanel No 19 is not strictly a chypre--it has no labdanum--it is imbued with the back-in-time-glamour that this category of scent provides. It envokes a feeling of walking through the trees, and you get the leaves and the damp mossy forest floor. But then a shaft of light shears through the branches and you see a spider web glistening with dew-like diamonds and illuminated foliage. The smell of hay is in the distance. All of this is cloaked in that air of sophistication that the early Chanel perfumes always provide. Of course the iris orris root is a major player in this perfume. My bottle of Chanel No 19 gets buried in the back of the perfume cupboard and I always forget how much I love it until I pull it out and spray. Years ago I decided to purchase the EDT, not the EDP, after trying both. The reason why escapes me but I think I found the EDT greener and brighter. I love this perfume especially for wear in autumn and winter.

Photo from www.Almanac.com

Caudalie is a French brand that has built their natural skin care products around the anti-oxidant power of grapes. Caudalie Fleur de Vigne  was introduced in 2002 as "a stroll through the vines" and the website says the flower blooms 110 days before the grape harvest and lasts just a few days. The scent is light and fleeting, just like the life cycle of the flower. It has a long list of notes but I'm not going to bother with them because none stand out when you smell the scent. The overall feel I get is fresh, clean water. There is a slight green feel to the scent, and although citrus notes are listed I do not smell them. Fleur de Vigne mimics the smell of grapes, which is admittedly very faint and takes a bit of imagination, and it is a wonderful water scent with none of that chemical ozonic smell that often typifies aquatic scents. It ends on a fresh musk note. This is good for men or women and the only complaints seem to be longevity. I would say this is a nice scent for people who don't want to smell like "perfume", who work in an office environment and want something pleasing but inoffensive, or someone who likes to give their olafactory senses a break but can't totally forgo scent.

Roger & Gallet is a brand that I remember from my youth and it used to be easier to find back then in the US. Judging by comments that appear from time to time on fragrance chat sites I am not alone in my longing for their carnation soap, round and wrapped in pleated paper, which used to be readily available. It disappeared during the era when carnation fell out of favor as being too old fashioned. Roger & Gallet  was founded in 1862 but its origins stretch all the way back to 1806 which is when Jean Marie Farina introduced a cologne, the formula coming from his great grand uncle who produced it in the 1700s. It is still sold today and known as Extra Vieille. Napolean was a fan and it is said that Josephine commissioned a slender vial of the cologne that he could slip into his boot and carry with him on battle campaigns.

I had wondered why Roger & Gallet seemed to disappear from US store shelves a decade ago and it turns out that is when it was bought by L'Oreal. One would think this would have given the brand a push, and I do believe that the line was modernized and revamped for European markets. Here in the US its presence mainly consisted of the resell of old bottles on discount websites or Amazon vendors. I found the ad below with its nymph-like Marie Antoinette characters fun to watch, and perhaps its a hopeful sign that L'Oreal is finally ready to invest some interest in this company



I had heard about Fleur De Figuier from online discussions in the fragrance community so I made a point of looking for it in a Paris pharmacy. The fragrance was created in 2013 and I was surprised to learn the perfumer was Francis Kurkdijian. They have a new concentration (or at least new to me) called Fragrant Wellbeing Water. It's the perfect name because the initial spray is very fragrant but it is still sheer and airy, and it truly does bring a smile of "wellbeing" to my face. I may regret not buying the edp version of this which was introduced in 2015, but this one just smelled so good on the warm summer day. It is very figgy, with fig nectar, fig leaf, and fig. There is a sweetness to this scent but it is a natural fruit sweetness and therefore earthy and warm. This scent is yummy but not overpowering. Roger & Gallet fragrances are not spendy and are readily available throughout Europe, can be found in Asia, and are mostly available on Amazon in the US. Please let me know if you have another US-based source.

In addition I also purchased Feuille De Figuier, introduced in 2018, which is more about the fig leaf and thus loses the sweetness of the fig itself. Here the fig is green and dry, not yet ripe and dripping with sap,  It is meant to evoke "a stroll through a sun soaked garden under the shadow of fig trees". The perfumer is Mathilde Bijaoui, a name I thought sounded familiar, and I realized she is responsible for the 2018-spring limited edition Jo Malone line English Fields featuring grain notes. This was the first of the limited editions I fell for in some time and I wrote about it here. This scent is quieter than the Fleur version and reminds me of a walk through an especially fragrant woods with dry leaves underfoot and the occasional shaft of sunlight disturbing the quiet reverie. Notes are bergamot, mandarin, galbanum, neroli, fig leaf, benjoin, and cedarwood. It becomes very subtle fairly quickly but for the cost, go ahead and respray.

I keep mentioning cost, but one thing that really struck me while I was in France was how many brands of fragrance were available in the pharmacies featuring lighter versions, either EDT or EDC. They were uniformly beautiful fragrances for a very pleasing cost. Here is a photo from one such store. I did try a couple of sprays of the brand below but it seemed that every day in France I had about ten sprays up and down my arms so I wasn't able to get a clear enough impression to write a review. I do remember that I really liked the ones from this line that I tried.

The last note I'm going to mention is Verveine, or verbena as it is known in English. The sharp citrus smell would make one believe that perfumes with this note must have bergamot, neroli, lemon, or some such note. However verveine is a herbaceous woody flowering plant. My first introduction to this note years ago was through the L'Occitane line and I still have a little bottle of  L'Occitane Verbena which I spray on hot days when I need a pick-me-up. It is akin to a cold cloth pressed on the forehead to revive on a warm summer day. I went into a couple of L'Occitane shops in our travels and it seems that they offered a larger inventory in Europe than they do in the US. Is it my imagination or did L'Occitane used to offer a larger selection of perfumes in the US?

Fragonard shops are ubiquitous in France, or at least in Provence. Every town of any size seemed to have one. I prefer their simpler perfumes that concentrate on a single note rather than their more complex scents. They have made an art of attractive packaging combined with affordable pricing. Every year Fragonard picks a signature scent and this year it happens to be verveine. I smelled the new scent, Fragonard Verveine, and it has the familiar citrus-like opening found in all verbena-based scents. If you like lemony freshness you will probably enjoy this scent.

If you like the idea of verbena scents but want something with a bit more sophistication, try Le Jardin Retrouve's Verveine d'Ete, which combines the bracing fresh opening of verveine with herbal notes of basil and eucalyptus and deeper notes of oakmoss and vetiver. I reviewed the entire Le Jardin Retrouve line here.

I hope you've enjoyed this trip through Provence. If you would like to read more go to Part One.

All photos my own unless otherwise indicated, except Fragonard photo from their website. All perfumes my own.