Words by Maggie Nugent & Photographs by Greta Rybus - an extract from our sold out France magazine.

Grasse is a quaint, provincial town straight out of Beauty and the Beast, all terracotta roofs and faded wooden shutters that swing open every morning as locals greet their neighbours. At first glance, you wouldn’t know this was the unofficial perfume capital of the world, but take a deep breath and, ah, there it is: the entire town is steeped in a beautiful, nostalgic scent that wraps you up and whisks you away.

A few miles from the city centre is Le Domaine de Manon, a jasmine and rose farm run by Carole Biancalana, a fourth generation aromatics producer whose jasmine harvest is exclusively reserved for Dior. Situated on a steep hill, it’s accessible only by winding, narrow roads that the French navigate with ease, while we tourists white-knuckle the hairpin turns at a glacial pace. With mountains on one side and the ocean on the other, Biancalana mentions the idea of terroir often when describing her jasmine. Translating literally as ‘earth’, terroir describes the unique environs needed to produce goods that can’t be found anywhere else. Some aspects are practical - soil, air, altitude - but terroir also describes the certain je ne sais quoi of a region that allows it to grow, for example, aromatic flowers so magical that perfume giants like Chanel, Dior and Hermès flock to stake their claim. It’s not just the soil. It’s the culture, the people and the way the land is worked that allow Grasse to grow jasmine so multidimensional that it produces seven tones of scent: animal, mango, almond, banana, milk, strawberry and grass. Jasmine flowers blossom every night from August to October, and which of these tones they emit depends entirely on the day.

If you pay a visit to Le Domaine de Manon on any given morning of the jasmine season you’ll find a group of women hunched over the freshly bloomed bushes, plucking the soft, delicate blossoms and placing them in small wicker baskets. The scene is resplendent - the sun low in the sky, mountains looming in the distance, a calm hush over the farm, save for the women’s gentle chatter. And the smell. Fresh, crisp, fruity and floral, the scent of the jasmine hangs in the air, in a way that makes you want to keep taking slow, deep breaths to savour the aroma. At noon, with the day’s flowers picked, the women combine their blossoms, which are whisked off to a parfumerie down the road. It is there that the scent will be extracted to make pure jasmine oil, with 2,000 baskets of blooms needed to produce one kilogram of pure oil.

Like most farmers, Carole keeps a sharp eye on the climate. In an industry so dependent on its environs, Biancalana is wary of the changes she’s seen since she was a child watching her grandmother grow jasmine. The seasons are starting earlier, leaving the crops vulnerable to frosts and ice, and extreme weather events like drought and hail are more frequent. While the farm can irrigate during droughts, it’s not the same. Their seven-tone jasmine is a result of that unique terroir, like a precise recipe dreamed up by Mother Nature herself. Without rain, the recipe is off.

Carole talks with the authority of someone who works the land. While her flowers only bloom for a few months, she’s outside tending the land year round, and she remains optimistic. Her farm has survived for generations and she hopes one day her daughter might take over the family business. In an industry dominated by men, Carole is the perfect figurehead for a prominent flower farm - beautiful, strong, intelligent and sharp - and she and those who pick for her are an integral part of that mystical terroir. Sitting beneath the rising sun, watching these women pluck pure white blossoms, their hushed laughter drifting down the rows, it’s easy to imagine that this place really does have some magical quality; one so tangible that an entire industry was created to try and capture it in a bottle.