Blood orange

There is a particular sweetness that only appears when a fruit has been through the cold. Blood orange has it. The crimson in its flesh is the memory of frosty nights, and the oil in its peel carries the same warmth.

What blood orange is

Blood orange is a variety of sweet orange, Citrus sinensis, whose flesh turns red because of anthocyanin pigments that develop when warm days are followed by cold nights. The oil is cold expressed from the peel. Compared with ordinary sweet orange it is rounder and more aldehydic, with a fresh, faintly bitter edge that keeps it from turning into juice.

Where our blood orange comes from

Ours is grown in Italy, where the variety was perfected and where the climate does the essential work. The pigment and the aromatic depth both depend on a real winter, and Italian groves in the south get exactly that: hot summers to ripen the fruit and cold December nights to colour it. The oil expressed from these fruits is sweeter than Brazilian or Floridian orange and has a soft tangerine facet that I find nowhere else. The origin is printed as Italy because that is what our formula books record. I do not claim a province I cannot stand behind.

How blood orange smells

Sweet orange, aldehydic, with a tangerine brightness. It is warmer and more sunlit than bergamot and less sharp than lemon, and it has a faint sparkling quality, like the fine spray that rises when you peel the fruit.

Blood orange in our chapter

• IHayalThe Crown · in the opening

  In Hayal it is the warm centre of the citrus opening, the sunlight that makes the ginger and peppers glow rather than bite.

A note from the atelier

Blood orange is the one citrus I use for warmth rather than freshness. In Hayal it does the work of a small fire in the first minute, and everything that follows feels lit from within.

Questions about blood orange