Grasse - A Personal Discovery ;)

On a bright sunny day we took a long drive up the hills of Cote D’Azur, dog and all, and made our way to Grasse – the little town made famous by it’s historical perfume industry.  Now, I have been to Grasse before and done the whole explore-the-town, perfume museum tours and shopping for perfumes dance. This time round though we went in with a very single minded focus – a sort of self-discovery – we went to Grasse to create our very own custom perfume!

Yep, you heard it right – I now have my very own signature fragrance :D and so does Alex haha. Anyhow, it all started with me doing some random research on what ‘else’ could I do in Grasse other than buy perfume (read: me wanting to invent my own walk around the city :P ). I found a few companies which host perfume making workshops with many many MANY different permutations and combinations of price points and offerings and recalled (rather randomly) that Alex always wanted a unique perfume that no one else had. It being man’s birthday and all during our vacation week I decided that a workshop like this makes for the perfect gift. We picked Galimard, which is the oldest Perfume house in Grasse (started in 1747), offers a complete 2-hour workshop and the noses that work there can speak many languages. At the start of our workshop they gave a set of 9 bottles with no names on them and asked us to choose 2 smell that we liked the most. These two smells served as the base families of our perfumes. From there we went on to pick out heart notes and then finally head notes; with a break in between so as not to get too muddled with all the smells around us. They had around a 100 scents to choose from for both men and women and each of our individual perfumes is made up of 4 base, 6 heart and 5 head notes. So, not just do you get to make your own signature perfume but they also keep the recipe on record so that you can order the perfume again once its over and also order stuff like Eau de Toilette, Soap, Body wash and Body lotion.

Turns out that Alex and I both like very strong, woodsy smells :P Also, I loved the hospitality because not only were they kind enough to accommodate the doggie poo but he actually went into the workshop area and slept blissfully in the cool AC room :) Overall I would say that if you do take the time out to go down to Grasse at any point do make an appointment with Galimard for this workshop (and you can of course buy some of their signature perfumes :P).

The Effect of All the Scents on my poor Nose :P

OOOhhhhhh Perfume Maker Thingies 

Our Perfumes :D

Galimard Website: http://www.galimard.com/