Grapefruit

Grapefruit is the citrus that behaves most like a flower. It is delicate, it fades quickly, and it has a bitterness that reads as elegance rather than sourness. In the right place it can make a rose feel as if it has just been rinsed by rain.

What grapefruit is

Grapefruit oil is cold expressed from the peel of Citrus paradisi. It is one of the most fleeting materials in perfumery, and one of the most distinctive. Its character comes largely from nootkatone, the molecule responsible for the bitter, juicy signature that separates grapefruit from every other citrus, and from a small sulphur containing compound that gives the fresh, almost tart brightness of the cut fruit.

Where our grapefruit comes from

Our grapefruit oil comes from the United States, where the fruit was first grown commercially and where the industry that presses it is centred. Grapefruit needs long heat to ripen, months of it, and the warm growing regions of the American south provide exactly that. The oil expressed there is fresh and juicy with the bitter facet intact. Our formula books record the country, not a state, so that is what I print.

How grapefruit smells

Fruity, fresh, juicy and tangy, with a little bitterness at the end. It is lighter and cooler than orange, and it carries a faint pink quality that I can only describe as the smell of the fruit's colour.

Grapefruit in our chapter

• IVRosée BlancheThe Climbing Rose · in the opening

  In Rosée Blanche it opens beside bergamot and pink pepper, the dew on the climbing rose before the geranium and the rose itself unfold.

A note from the atelier

Grapefruit lasts minutes, not hours, and I am at peace with that. Its work in Rosée Blanche is done in the first breath, when it convinces you that the rose you are about to meet is wet and alive.

Questions about grapefruit