Ginger

Fresh ginger and dried ginger are two different materials. The dried root is warm and dusty; the fresh root is sharp, lemony and almost fizzy on the tongue. The extract I use captures the fresh one, the root as it is when you first cut into it.

What ginger is

Our ginger is a supercritical CO2 extract of the rhizome of Zingiber officinale. In this method carbon dioxide under pressure becomes a gentle solvent that dissolves the aromatic compounds of the root at low temperature and then simply evaporates, leaving nothing behind. Unlike steam distillation, which loses the pungent gingerols, the CO2 process keeps both the fresh citral top and the warm, peppery bite. The result smells like the root itself rather than a memory of it.

Where our ginger comes from

Ours comes from Africa, as our formula books record, and I print the continent rather than a country I cannot confirm. Ginger is grown across the warm belt of West and East Africa, where the hot, humid growing season and heavy rains produce rhizomes with a high oil content and a pronounced lemony freshness. African ginger is known for its strength, a high oil content and a pronounced pungency beneath the fresh lemony top that all good ginger shares, which is the character I wanted at the crown of the tree.

How ginger smells

Spicy, terpenic and citral fresh, then warm. At first it is bright and lemony, with a green sharpness like a cut root. Then the heat arrives, peppery and glowing, and stays on the skin as a soft warmth long after the freshness has gone.

Ginger in our chapter

• IHayalThe Crown · in the opening

  In Hayal it is the heat inside the citrus opening, the living root beside blood orange and lemon that makes the first minute feel like a pulse.

A note from the atelier

I wanted Hayal to open like the moment before a decision: bright, sharp and slightly electric. Ginger is what gives that opening its nerve.

Questions about ginger