• On the hillsides of Plascassier, a village in Grasse between the sea and the mountains where Carole Biancalana cultivates the 4 hectares of the Domaine de Manon, the jasmine harvest began at the end of June, due to the drought.

  • “We work every morning, from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., and no later than otherwise the sun burns the vegetable wax,” explains a picker.

" You feel ?

There are flavors of banana, almond, coconut, lychee, peach, pineapple.

And then we especially have a lot of pear at the moment.

At the end of the season, there will even be strawberry notes.

And you have to treat the flowers very quickly to keep all their properties.

Despite the drought, which made her plans bloom earlier this year, Carole Biancalana's jasmine expresses a dizzying complexity.

With some 260 chemical compounds that are revealed in perfumes.

On the hillsides of Plascassier, a village in Grasse between the sea and the mountains where this producer cultivates the 4 hectares of the Domaine de Manon, the harvest began at the end of June.

“Usually, it's more July, or even August, explains the one who took over the family farm twenty years ago.

And we will continue until October, maybe even the beginning of November.

“Daily work since buds hatch every morning and “very meticulous because we must not damage the flowers in the making”, breathes Véronique, one of the pickers at the estate.

She specifies: “We work in the morning, from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., and no later, otherwise the sun burns the vegetable wax.

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A fragile little flower, the target of a pest

Exploited since the 17th century on the hills of Grasse, the little flower is precious and fragile.

“You have to put it in a ventilated wicker basket large enough so that it doesn't macerate,” says Carole Biancalana.

This white gold is also the target of a pest.

“The jasmine moth bothers us.

And since we are in organic farming, we had to find solutions.

The trichogramma [a micro-hymenoptera] seems to be very effective against this butterfly,” says Carole Biancalana.

Very involved in the perfume sector in Grasse, whose know-how has been listed since 2018 in the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by Unesco, the boss created the association Les Fleurs d'exception du Pays de Grasse which has developed a "FabLab" where experiments are carried out.

Barely harvested, immediately processed

And so far, plans for the Domaine de Manon are looking good.

“But with jasmine, you have to go very quickly.

The flowers are delivered directly after the harvest and processed every day in a factory in Grasse”, supports Carole Biancalana, who reserves all of her production, also the centifolia rose and the tuberose, for Dior.

"We entered into an exclusive partnership in 2008 and they saved my farm," says the specialist, who comes from a family of producers for four generations.

In decline for a good part of the 20th century, weakened by land pressure, the cultivation of perfume plants has picked up again thanks to luxury houses, in search of made in France.

In 2018, interviewed by

20 Minutes

, Jean-Pierre Leleux, former mayor of Grasse and behind the UNESCO classification, recalled that the city had gone from "1,200 to 1,300 ha concerned in the 1930s" to only " 80 ha today", but that it was now arousing a "renewed interest".

With new land made available in the city's PLU [local urban plan].

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Near Grasse, Chanel makes tuberose bloom again

Lots of flowers for a perfume concentrate

For one kilo of absolute, the concentrate used in the manufacture of perfumes, you need no less than 700 kg of petals.

Carole Biancalana specifies that one hectare of jasmine plants can produce between 2 and 3 tons of flowers each year.

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