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Capturing the scent of peaches is no easy feat. The fruit is delicate and must be handpicked at just the right moment - when its flesh is colourful and soft to the touch, but not so ripe as to be damaged, even by gentle harvesting. 

With peach’s high water content and volatile aromatic compounds, traditional extraction methods often fall short. To overcome this, our head nose, Elodie Durande, experimented with a bespoke white peach water that has rarely, if ever, been used in perfumery before. Using a spinning cone column process, the fruit’s aromatic molecules are isolated and distilled to preserve the juicy, velvety scent of fresh peaches in a naturally enriched water. 

Summer 25

White peach water

Blend

Fruit

Juicy

Green

Velvet

Fresh

Grown on Calabrian hills overlooking the Ionian Sea, the fruit is harvested by hand and the oil extracted at source. The La Face family planted their first bergamot in the 1930’s and have been mastering the craft of producing citrus oils ever since. They are always our first port of call when it comes to sourcing bergamot and other citruses for our fragrances.


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Bergamot rind- a fragrance ingredient from Calabria, Italy, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Bergamot rind

Earl grey

Citrus

Floral

You may know palmarosa best from its use in verbena teas - the flat leaves of this dense grass produce a powerful lemony odour when rubbed, making its relation to citronella and lemongrass clear. Our palmarosa grows wild in the Himalayas and in the Radjmahal Mountains on India’s Afghan border, where it is harvested by indigenous tribes. The grasses are then dried for a week to increase the essential oil yield before undergoing steam distillation. The oil is powerful and herbaceous, with a strong rosy note that lends it the ‘rosa’ half of its name. Though sometimes used as a cheaper substitute for rose oil, at Ffern we use it to complement our rose oils, bringing a clean, wild edge to the accord. 


Palmarosa- a fragrance ingredient from Radjmahal Mountains, India, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Palmarosa

Rose

Soft

Sweet

Sweet-floral

Lemon

Known as the ‘golden spice’ for its radiant hue, turmeric has been revered for millennia in both culinary and medicinal traditions. In perfumery, turmeric leaf shares the root’s spicy, woody and earthy character. 

We harvest our turmeric leaf in Tamil Nadu, India, where the spice is native and has been grown for over 5,000 years. The leaves, typically a byproduct of the turmeric root harvest, are hydro-distilled to extract the essential oil. 

Turmeric leaf- a fragrance ingredient from Tamil Nadu, India, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Turmeric leaf

Warm

Earth

Spice

Wood

For a few brief weeks in early spring, the hills around France’s perfume capital, Grasse, are splashed with sunshine yellow; the mimosa trees are in flower. Mimosa is a kind of acacia native to Australasia. Wildly popular in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, mimosa has a powerful scent - fresh, floral, a little honeyed, with a powdery facet. Because of its power, it’s used with a lighter touch today than it used to be, but is still a keystone ingredient for perfumiers. 


Mimosa- a fragrance ingredient from Atlantic Coast, Morocco, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Mimosa

Powder

Honey

Birch tar is produced by the rectification of crude birch oil, which is itself obtained by the slow destructive distillation of birch bark - a process in which the decomposition of the organic material is achieved by heating it to a high temperature. The birch bark we source is a byproduct of the wood industry in the USA, with the distillation process also taking place in the USA.

Birch tar is produced by the rectification (purification by re-distillation) of crude birch oil, which is itself obtained by the slow destructive distillation of birch bark (a process in which the decomposition of the organic material is achieved by heating it to a high temperature). The birch bark we use is a byproduct of the wood industry in the USA, with the distillation process also taking place in the USA. 

Birch tar, which has been used for medicinal purposes since the late Paleolithic era, has a lovely smokiness to it with a woody, almost leathery undertone - a little like an old, full-bodied brandy.


Birch tar- a fragrance ingredient from Virginia, USA, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Birch tar

Base

Smoke

Leather

Grapefruit oil is cold pressed from the fruit’s golden rind. Native to the Caribbean, grapefruit is thought to have been born from an accidental union of pomelo, the largest citrus fruit, and sweet orange. An eighteenth-century Welsh sailor described it as one of the ‘seven wonders of Barbados,’ but it was not scientifically considered distinct from pomelo until the mid-nineteenth century. The essential oil is (unsurprisingly) pretty citrusy and does not differ greatly from orange and lemon oils. However, it has a distinctively herbaceous side, almost woody — a little like vetiver — and a hint of green, slightly minty. 


White grapefruit rind- a fragrance ingredient from Florida, USA, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

White grapefruit rind

Sharp

Herbaceous

Mint

Cardamom is a tall, reed-like perennial shrub native to South Indian and Sri Lanka. The mature fruit takes the form of a capsule-like pod that holds within it around twenty small, aromatic seeds. The cardamom we use at Ffern is grown in Guatemala and the essential oil is extracted by steam distillation of the seeds. The fragrance is fresh and citrusy whilst possessing a spicy warmth. 


Cardamom seed- a fragrance ingredient from Alta Verapaz cloud forests, Guatemala , used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Cardamom seed

Our balsam fir absolute is extracted from wild-grown needles east of Calgary, in Canada. The scent is often compared to that of jam: intense, very long lasting, sweet, fresh and foresty all at once.


Balsam fir- a fragrance ingredient from Alberta, Canada, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Balsam fir

Balsam

Licorice

With one of the most beautiful Latin names, _Artemisia dracunculus_ is also known as biting dragon, dragon plant and estragon. Our tarragon is grown in the South of France. The plants do not produce fertile seeds - instead the roots are hand-split in early spring. In June, the leaves are trimmed and the oil distilled. Our variety has a distinctive aniseed facet, with an earthy undertone.⁠
⁠


Tarragon leaf- a fragrance ingredient from Le Midi, France, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Tarragon leaf

Basil

Aniseed

At Ffern, we use a rose absolute from the Damask rose (also known as Rose Isparta), the queen of flowers, grown in southwest Turkey - a region renowned for its cultivation of this flower. The production of the rose concrete is carried out on site, after which it is sent to Seville, where it is made into rose absolute by a family-run distillery founded at the turn of the twentieth century.⁠


Rose- a fragrance ingredient from South West Turkey, Turkey, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Davana belongs to the silver-leafed _Artemisia_ family, and many tiny yellow flowers grow against its soft greenery. It is a fragrant herb with an elusive scent, said to smell completely different on each person who wears it. Native to India, the dried herb has a sweet, dried-fruit aroma that is reminiscent of tea. 


Davana- a fragrance ingredient from Andhra Pradesh, India, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Davana

To make neroli, blossoms from the bitter orange tree are soaked in water before being steam distilled - the water left behind is orange flower water. For hundreds of years, this treasured ingredient brought a delicate, floral hint of orange to Middle Eastern sweets and drinks. Its popularity as a fragrance and flavouring grew in Europe during the Renaissance, so much so that bitter orange began to be cultivated in the South of France expressly to make it. 


Orange flower water- a fragrance ingredient from Cape Bon, Tunisia Morocco Blend, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Orange flower water

Orange flower

Oakwood serves as a powerful fixative in perfumery, anchoring a fragrance and extending its longevity. Invoking the scents of the forest floor, the fireplace, or perhaps the richness of old wine barrels, oakwood brings a unique, enchanting quality to perfumery. Its multifaceted aroma profile allows it to blend seamlessly with woody, spicy and floral notes.
We harvest our oakwood from the vast forests of the Allier region in central France, where production is carefully regulated to ensure sustainable harvesting practices. Only mature trees are felled, helping to maintain the balance of the forest ecosystem. Our CO2 extraction method preserves the natural aroma of the wood without degrading its components.


Oakwood- a fragrance ingredient from Allier, France, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Oakwood

Deep

Old wood

Our red cedar wood (also known as red juniper) is grown and harvested in its native Virginia, USA, and principally used for cabinet making. The oil is steam distilled directly from a cabinet maker’s offcuts. It shares the classic woody notes of atlas cedar, but introduces a distinctive ‘pencil’ facet. 


Red cedar- a fragrance ingredient from Virginia, USA, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Red cedar

Pencils

We harvest Douglas fir needles in Canada and transport them to France, where we extract the absolute. The braches are cut in the morning, for as they warm up during the day they release more of their precious oil. The note is very long-lasting, balsamic and fresh.


Douglas fir- a fragrance ingredient from British Columbia, Canada, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Douglas fir

The cognac oil we have sourced is a byproduct of winemaking in Romania - a land with its own distinctive climate and soil, which gives the cognac oil a certain character. The oil itself is obtained by distillation during the fermentation of the grape juice.⁠ As a base note, it is dry, green and slightly fruity. 


Cognac oil- a fragrance ingredient from Transylvania, Romania, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Cognac oil

Our black tang seaweed, often known as bladder wrack, is sustainably harvested from the coast of Brittany in France. After harvesting, the seaweed is dried before being ground into a powder. A solvent is then extracted from the powder to create the seaweed absolute.


Black tang seaweed- a fragrance ingredient from Brittany, France, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Black tang seaweed

Marine

Aromatic

Iodine

Red juniper, also called red cedar, is a coniferous evergreen native to Northeastern USA. We harvest red cedar in Virginia, when the plant is young, and steam distil the wood to extract a pure red juniper oil. 


Red juniper- a fragrance ingredient from Virginia, USA, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Red juniper

Sensual

Amber

Myrrh is a bitter-tasting gum taken from the small thorn tree _Commiphora myrrha_. These flowering trees can be found amid dry, rocky hills - at Ffern we harvest our myrrh in the highlands of Somaliland, northern Somalia. A highly valued perfume in the ancient world, myrrh of course features in the Christian Nativity as a gift of the Magi - but now it is of little value, used rarely for its fragrance and more often for its slight antiseptic and astringent qualities. Yet it has a lovely warm feel, bringing a spicy, balsamic note to the heart of a fragrance. 


Myrrh- a fragrance ingredient from Somaliland, Somalia, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Myrrh

Balsamic

Peppermint is a cross between watermint and spearmint, a familiar sparkly note with, as you’d expect, a slight peppery edge. This ingredient brings a distinctive ‘cold’ facet to fragrances, similar to eucalyptus. We partner with farmers in India's northerly 'Mint Regions' to grow and steam distill our high grade peppermint oil.


Peppermint- a fragrance ingredient from Uttar Pradesh, India, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Peppermint

Cool

Our coriander is grown by farming cooperatives in the famously fertile soil of the Central Black Earth region on Russia’s western border. The entire fruit is harvested late in the summer, and distilled on site with a traditional steam-based method. 


Coriander seed- a fragrance ingredient from Black Earth Region, Ukraine, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Coriander seed

All our fragrances are made with an organic grain alcohol base. A blend of common and spelt organic wheats are quintuple distilled at our north Italian distillery in Cuneo, beneath Monte Viso, to yield a 198 proof perfumers' alcohol. 


Soft wheat- a fragrance ingredient from Cunea, Italy, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Soft wheat

Sandalwood has long been prized for its soothing, sweet fragrance. Arab perfumiers have been using it for thousands of years - powdered, diffused in oil, or burnt as incense - and it is often used in spiritual or religious practices, particularly in India. Sandalwood is a slow-growing parasitic plant that can reach heights of ten metres. Its sweet, woody, rich scent is extracted by steam distilling wood or root chippings. Due to its versatility as an ingredient (it's an excellent fixative, too), sandalwood is immensely popular and vulnerable to over-harvesting - thankfully, new groves are being successfully planted and harvested in Australia, heralding a more sustainable future for sandalwood production. 


Sandalwood- a fragrance ingredient from Western Australia, Australia, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Sandalwood

Milk

Cinnamon has a long history as a valuable and sacred spice. It was imported to ancient Egypt from its native Sri Lanka as early as 2000 BCE. Our cinnamon is grown along the southwest coast of Sri Lanka, where sandy soils lead to higher quality oil. To produce the oil we use in our fragrances, the bark is stripped, hung to dry for 5 days, and steam distilled.


Ceylon cinnamon bark- a fragrance ingredient from Southwest coast, Sri Lanka, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Ceylon cinnamon bark

The name rosemary, _romarin_ in French, is beleived to come from the Latin _ros marinus_, which means ‘dew of the sea.’ This refers to its abundance on Mediterranean coastlines and islands, where it grows wild, scenting the air with its cool freshness. In Tunisia, wild rosemary is so beloved that it’s protected by the government. At Ffern, we work with a local firm to bid on wild harvesting rights, and extract the oil at source.


Rosemary- a fragrance ingredient from South, Tunisia, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Rosemary

Ffern key lime is grown in the north of Peru. The fruits are harvested in the afternoon to avoid the oil loss caused by their early morning turgor. Next, they are passed through a pelatrice, and the gathered liquid is centrifuged to obtain a pure lime rind oil. 


Key lime rind- a fragrance ingredient from Veracruz, Mexico, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Key lime rind

Sparkling

Zest

The composition of a basil essential oil can vary greatly with the with the site of cultivation and the specificities of the growing method. After some deliberation, we settled on an Egyptian basil 'grand vert', renowned for its high linalool composition and distinctive aniseed notes. The leaves are cut and immediately distilled - if they are allowed to dry, the scent is largely lost.


Basil grand vert- a fragrance ingredient from Vert-le-Grand, France, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Basil grand vert

Of all the ferulas, ferula gummosa is prized for its intense, green parsley-scented root resin - galbanum. After three years growing in the foothills of the Alborz in Northern Iran, wild Ffern ferula roots are hand-scored with a traditional wrought iron galbanum tool. The score fills with resin over a three day period, dries, and only then is harvested. Each plant will produce galbanum for another four years before the resin yield falls to zero.


Ferula gummosa root- a fragrance ingredient from Alborz, Iran, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Ferula gummosa root

Bitter

For our Autumn 23 fragrance, we collaborated with chef and farmer Julius Roberts - when visiting his Dorset farm in early autumn, he showed us a dazzling fig tree, the fruits long gone but the leaves still bold and bright. We knew this had to be at the heart of the fragrance we were making together. But fig is a ‘mute’ plant - you cannot extract its essence. We explored this with Elodie, our nose, and after six months of exacting work we created a natural fig accord. 
Blackcurrant bud, osmanthus and petitgrain bring the essential fruity facets, while red cedar captures the wood of the tree's branches. Davana and galbanum are spiced and herbal, and violet leaf carries the delicate florality of the scent. Finally, tonka bean brings vanilla sweetness, its 90% coumarin content gesturing to the jammy quality of ripe figs. The result is rich and intoxicating, a glorious celebration of the fig leaf. 


Fig leaf accord- a fragrance ingredient from , Various, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Fig leaf accord

Vanilla

Plum

This sought-after perfumer’s ingredient is literally worth its weight in gold. Native to the eastern Himalayas, the osmanthus tree is a small shrub with evergreen leaves and pale spring flowers that smell of peaches and apricots - it is these flowers from which osmanthus oil is extracted. The scent is particularly adored in China, where legend has it that a huge osmanthus tree grows on the moon, along with the fairy Chang E, her pet Jade Rabbit and the giant Wu Chang.


Osmanthus flower- a fragrance ingredient from Anhui, China, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Osmanthus flower

Peach

Like pink and Szechuan peppers, timut pepper is not really a pepper at all - but a berry, plucked from the steep mountain sides of the Mahabharats in southern Nepal. It is made up of a hard, bitter black seed (this is removed before being used for cooking) encased in a pericarp, a casing a bit like the zest of a tangerine. These little berries have made an exciting entrance into the perfume world only recently. Their complex citrus sparkle is, for many people, akin to grapefruit or dried peel, bringing a light, fresh spice to the opening of a fragrance. Ffern timut pepper is harvested in Nepal and extracted using the supercritical CO2 process. 


Timut pepper- a fragrance ingredient from Mahabharat Mountain Range, Nepal, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Timut pepper

Grapefruit

The damask rose has long been a symbol of the city of Damascus in Syria. Thought to be the oldest inhabited city in the world, Damascus was long known as the fragrant city, or _al-Fayḥāʾ_, for the stunning orchards and gardens that surrounded it. Things are sadly different now - but the legend of the damask rose lives on and has been inherited by the Rose Valley in Bulgaria, where our roses are grown and distilled. They are hand-picked in the early mornings and must be quickly distilled - some pickers even take their copper stills to the fields, heating the roses over wood fires to extract the few precious drops of ‘liquid gold’ that each bloom yields. 


Rose otto- a fragrance ingredient from Rose Valley, Bulgaria, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Rose otto

The common name geranium actually encompasses two kinds of flower - geraniums and pelargoniums. The one we use is _Pelargonium graveolens_, known as the rose geranium, and it is a wonderful friend to the perfumer. Paired with damask rose, it brings a lighter, brighter facet that is almost citrusy; this can lift the powdery richness of the rose, bringing texture and depth to the accord. Legend has it that the rose geranium was created when the prophet Mohammed, after bathing in a nearby river, laid his shirt upon a mallow branch to dry - the mallow was so honoured that it transformed itself into a plant with beautiful flowers and fragrant leaves: the rose geranium. 


Rose geranium- a fragrance ingredient from Nile Valley, Egypt, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Rose geranium

Our _Lavandula angustifolia_ is grown by a network of family farms in the hills of Provence at 600-1500m above sea level. This much-loved herb is particularly beloved of Provençals, who have been growing it for centuries, and it is often called the soul of the region. 


Lavender- a fragrance ingredient from Provence, France, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Lavender

Clean

This member of the magnolia family has beautiful bright orange and yellow petals, attracting bees and birds with its fragrant flowers. Its oil, extracted using a solvent extraction method, is red, and produces a scent that is sweet, floral and fruity. Our red champaca is sourced from the Indian Himalayan Region, where the flowers are often floated in bowls of water to scent a room. 


Red champaca flower- a fragrance ingredient from Indian Himalayan Region, India, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Red champaca flower

Buchu leaf oil is made by drying and steam distilling the leaves from the small, thorny buchu bush. Native to South Africa, buchu has long been used by indigenous communities there for a range of medicinal purposes. It grows wild near streams in the fynbos, a belt of coastal shrubland in the Eastern and Western Cape with a Mediterranean climate. It has a bittersweet, blackcurrant tang with a hint of mint. 


Buchu leaf- a fragrance ingredient from South Africa, Cape Peninsula, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Buchu leaf

Blackcurrant

Camphor

Our jonquil daffodil, also known as rush daffodil, is grown in the hills around Grasse, the historic perfume capital of France. The flowers typically bloom in late winter to early spring,  producing clusters of small, intensely fragrant yellow flowers.
Unlike many other spring flowers that decrease in quality after the first season’s bloom, jonquil daffodils retain their exceptional bloom year after year, thanks to their natural bulb division. We work with skilled local harvesters, who uphold traditional, sustainable practices. Only the blossoms are gently gathered, leaving the plants undisturbed to encourage future growth. 


Jonquil daffodil- a fragrance ingredient from Grasse, France, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Jonquil daffodil

We grow our pink grapefruit in groves certified by the Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) in Veracruz, Mexico, where generations of farmers have perfected the practice of citrus cultivation. Each fruit is carefully handpicked before the rind is cold-pressed while still fresh.

Sweeter and juicier than its white counterpart, pink grapefruit owes its bright, uplifting scent to a higher concentration of aldehydes, a molecule that gives the essential oil its signature sweet-sharp notes - sparkling, fresh and unmistakably citrussy.

Pink grapefruit rind- a fragrance ingredient from Veracruz, Mexico, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Pink grapefruit rind

Saffron is the world’s most expensive spice - in fact, there was a time long ago when it was more expensive than gold. We work with saffron growers in Kozani, in Northern Greece, which is the only area in Greece where saffron is grown. It’s considered by many to be the best in the world - hence its DPO (Designated Protection of Origin). 
Our saffron crocuses, or krokos, are grown by a cooperative of small farmers over about 500 acres. Each October, when the fields grow rich with purple flowers, pickers are out from dawn to dusk, carefully placing each flower in an apron or basket. The drying process is skilled, delicate and laborious, taking 20-60 days - but once this is done, the reddish-gold pistils, or stomata, can be crushed and steam-distilled, ready to continue the ancient tradition of saffron’s use in fragrance.


Saffron- a fragrance ingredient from Kozani, Greece, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Saffron

The clove tree is a tropical evergreen, lush with green leaves and reddish-brown buds which burst into many-headed white flowers. The word clove comes from Latin _clavus_, meaning nail, for the bud’s shape. It is this bud from which our fragrant clove oil is extracted, using a water distillation process. Grown in Northeastern Madagascar, the buds are removed in clusters from the tree’s branches, then hand-picked and sun-dried until they turn brown. Alongside nutmeg, black pepper, and mace, cloves were once one of the most valuable commodities in the world, prized as much for their exotic mystique as their warm, spicy aroma. 


Clove bud- a fragrance ingredient from Analanjirofo, Madagascar, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.