Birch tar

Birch tar is the smell of a fire in a northern forest. It is made by heating birch bark without air until it gives up a dark, smoky oil, and that oil was used for centuries to waterproof leather and preserve boats. Its scent is smoke and leather and burnt wood, and in the smallest amount it can give a composition the memory of a hearth.

What birch tar is

Birch tar is produced by the dry distillation of the bark of Betula pendula, the silver birch, heated in a closed vessel so that the bark breaks down into a thick, dark, intensely smoky oil. The crude tar is then rectified, distilled again to remove its harshest and darkest fractions, leaving a cleaner, more usable material. The rectified tar is rich in phenols and cresols, the molecules of smoke and leather, and it is the natural heart of the classic Russian leather accord.

Where birch tar grows

Our formula books record the material and the tree but not a country, and so I print none. The silver birch grows across the whole of northern Europe and Asia, and birch tar has been made in Scandinavia, the Baltic and Russia for as long as there have been forests and fires. The house rule holds: where no origin is written down, none is claimed. What I can say is that the tar I use is the true rectified bark tar of the birch, with the smoke and the leather of the north in it.

How birch tar smells

Smoky, leathery, phenolic and burnt wood. It smells of a campfire, of tar and of new leather, with a dry, slightly sweet finish, and even a trace of it lasts on skin for a full day.

Birch tar in our chapter

• IIParadis de BleuThe Leaves · in the base

  In Paradis de Bleu it is a trace of smoke at the very bottom of the green chapter, the memory of a fire beneath the moss and leather.

A note from the atelier

Every forest has known fire. In Paradis de Bleu the birch tar is the faintest trace, but it is the reason the forest floor smells lived in rather than merely green.

Questions about birch tar