One of my quiet pleasures is watching the seaplanes take off and land in Coal Harbour. Be it in the early morning, or at dusk, it's always exciting to watch those little planes as they shift from one element to the other.

I don't even know what it is about it that is so magical to me, but it's something I do a lot. In fact, I like to start my day walking down (only a few blocks from my studio) to the harbour, perhaps with a cup of steaming London Fog tea, and sit still while the marina comes back to life. And I can repeat the same in the afternoon with just much excitement. Being near the water makes me feel at peace and keeps my thoughts and inspiration flowing.

And of course, I love the smell of the sea. Even near the marina, you can smell the seaweed, and watch it dance on the rocks underneath the water. But what's even more unique about this spot is the scent of jet fuel as it mingles with the ocean's. Hot meets cold, the smoky burnt fuel scent, and the cool still water and seaweed. Nature clashes with machines, and they both become harmonious, at least from an olfactory point of view.

It seems like eons since I’ve shared anything here about anything creative going on in the studio. Not that I share everything that I do in my little tiny lab; but honestly, there was nothing to share. I have been avoiding my organ since the summer, except for when replenishing batches of perfumes that sold out. Which was fun, of course, but not interesting enough to write about here.

To be perfectly honest, I’ve been going through what could seem from the outside a “dry spell”. But really was a result of me being over worked and over stressed and intentionally avoiding creativity in my life. I had so much to process and take in, and I had to keep everything in the business as smooth as possible during the busiest season in the year (I literally had no time off for 6 weeks at certain point – unless you count a few hours here and there).

Creating new scents requires a certain degree of tranquility, not to mention concentration and focus. I really find it best to avoid creating anything new. It may seem strange, because in other art forms (music, dance, painting…) the act of creating art is calming and centering on its own. And I usually find that is the case with perfumery as well (to demonstrate this: I can’t even count how many times I had a headache and it disappeared only few minutes after I started working with the oils).

But this time it was different, and I really prefer to create with a clear mind. When traumatic and painful stuff happens in life, associating it with a fragrance will make it forever engrained in one’s olfactory memory. And frankly, I think I can do without that extra reinforcement of memory right now. Some things are best forgotten, or at least left to chance for imprinting their memories on our soulds. At times like that, I think it’s best to stick to fragrances that are comforting and familiar. And that’s pretty much what I was doing.

So back to my lab I am and with gradually increasing thrill, excitement and curiosity. And interestingly enough, my first material to delve deeper into is aquilaria agalocha, aka agarwood, eaglewood, audh, oud, oudh or for simplicity’s sake, in this post I’m going to call it aud.

Aud has such a profound impact on the mind when it’s burned as an incense. It really brings something otherworldly into the room where it is burned. Perhaps there was a reason why I was drawn to it at this point in time. It has an intensity and grace like no other oil.

In this perfume I created just a few days ago, and am wearing on my wrists today, I tried to go all the way with aud, to its most aggressive extremes. As noble as the scent may be, it develops in the wood only after it has been infected with a parasitic fungus. Agarwood collections look like scattered ancestral bones. The wood has hardly any scent on its own in room temperature, but once burned becomes something completely different. A similar effect is created by steam distillation or CO2 extraction. Which goes to show that great things can come out of morbid death and decay…

So, to take agarwood into the extreme, in this first experiment I decided to make it more animalic, a little smoky and as heavy and smoldering as I could possibly can. Agarwood CO2 is the most animalic one I have at the moment, very dark, resinous, almost yeasty, and at the same time a little berry-sweet underneath it all. It’s a sweet wood, instead of a dry wood (cedarwood, for example, takes it all when it comes to dryness). To intensify the animalic aspect, I added costus root absolute, African stone tincture and honey absolue. And to express the incensey, resinous, smoldering characteristics, I used some fossilized amber resin (steam distilled twice from the dust of the amber that is used in jewelry) and labdanum, and also an Indian amber-aud attar. It begins intensely aud with some smoky ambery notes creeping in from benath, and remains that way for a while. The amber and honey take over after a while though and leave a veil of sweetness behind.

moroccan still life , originally uploaded by christian wind

I've already told you before about my paternal grandmother, who made Aliya from Morocco.

Her afternoon tea ritual was something I always enjoyed and will never forget. The culture of tea arrived to Morocco most likely travelled to Morocco through Europe and became popular in the 18th Century, when trade between Morocco and Europe flourisehd and tea spread throughout North Africa and became an integral part of hospitality in the region. The French imperialism made the rituals even more elaborate with the addition of many French-influenced pastries, some of them exceptionally fancy. But Moroccan tea time remained mostly about hospitality and tea, and even the simplest pastries made the occasion special. The addition of fresh local herbs made the tea distinctively of the region - spearmint and lemon verbena in the summertime to make the tea refreshing and cooling (even when it is hot!), and bitter mugwort or sage in the wintertime for their medicinal properties.

Morocco is currently the first consumer of green tea world-wide, and is one of the only two Muslim countries to drink green tea (the other being Afghanistan). Green tea was probably not available at all in Israel in the 1950’s, when the Moroccan immigration was at its peak, and the Jewish Moroccan had to make do with black tea. But this did not make the tradition stop or diminish. In fact, the custom spread throughout the country and even Jews from non-Moroccan decent enjoyed black tea with a sprig of mint. Black tea with spearmint is served in all the Narguilla (Shisha) houses, with a great amount of sugar to help reduce the dryness in the mouth caused by the tobacco smoke and steam.

At my grandmother’s balcony, every afternoon tea was served with sweets and pastries suitable for the occasion. The staples were simple galettes - these were not crepes, but a long wavy biscuit type of hardly sweet cookies, which I am still hunting for a recipe for; or fennel flavoured biscuits and savoury sesame bagel-shaped cookies. Other staples that my grandmother almost always had on hand were round almond cookies with a single clove-bud stuck in the middle looking like a belly-button; and my than favourites - coconut cookies, with a silvery pearl-shaped decoration candy - both baked in the tiniest paper cups which made them look even more adorable.

When it was a holiday there may be some specialty pastries, as well as when her sisters came to visit from Paris. But either way, the conversations during tea time were exclusively in French so I was able to absorb the sound but focus on the flavours.

Sometime last year, I’ve tried to capture the aromas of this quiet tea time with a scent. Now it is offered in a very limited edition of 3 bottles for those smitten with mint and tea or who share my nostalgic Moroccan tea time memories.

Top notes: Spearmint, Black Pepper, Bitter Almond, Fennel

Heart notes: Rose Maroc, Honey, Licorice Mint

Base notes: Green Tea, Massoia Bark, Atlas Cedarwood