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So you think you know vanilla? Did you know it’s a fruit? From Edmund Albius who first figured out how to pollinate vanilla orchids to vanilla’s  journey around the globe this bean pod is far more dynamic than we often give it credit. First cultivated by the Totonac people of what is now Veracruz, Mexico with original mythology of love and tragedy. Bourbon vanilla and Tahitian vanilla beans show very different qualities- but each different locale from Veracruz to Colombia to Reunion to Madagascar to Taha’a represent very different aromatics and flavors. The word itself has now come to mean...

It’s kind of amazing that as a collective we have a cherry smell association that has nothing to do with actual cherries! From cherry lip balm as a kid to cherry slushies our association with artificial cherry can not be minimized for its impact on our sense memory! (Shout out to Winona Ryder in the movie Heathers  and her iconic cherry slushie). In the 90s there was a collective obsession with cocktail cherries as a hyper sexualized symbol. Warrant had its cherry pie and coca-cola had its cherry coke. But what of real cherries? Where and how do they fit...

We have passed the tipping point where the artificial in the normal. Why does that matter? Because our noses and palates are becoming so blown out that it’s blinding us to simple natural beauties. Like a passionfruit or a peach. Why shouldn’t we just eat the processed food or constantly surround ourselves with artificial smells? (And no disrespect to the gifted artists who make some of those smells) Because it’s changing our base line of normal and leaving out the natural world (cherries, wine, truffles, or the ability to smell the flowers clearly in your neighborhood). From a wine pairing...

When I first starting making perfume from fallen redwoods and rescuing from wood piles,  I began with the bark- possibly one of the most fragrant giving parts of the tree. When I moved on to distilling heart and sapwood I realized what an insult to the woods it would be to call that alone a redwood smell.  We are so used to looking at one thing, like a redwood, and considering it alone. Isolated. This is redwood smell. But the redwoods are a universe. Not just from trees to tree. The mosses, the berries, the dirt,