Clary sage

Clary sage is the herb that thinks it is an amber. Crush the leaf and you get something green and slightly bitter, but let the oil sit on skin for an hour and it turns warm, tea like and softly resinous. Few natural materials travel so far in one wearing.

What clary sage is

Clary sage oil is steam distilled from the flowering tops and leaves of Salvia sclarea, a tall biennial with velvet leaves and spires of papery pink and lilac bracts. The oil is dominated by linalyl acetate, which gives it a lavender like softness, but its true character comes from sclareol, a heavy molecule with an amber, almost tobacco warmth that is found in no other herb. Sclareol is also the starting point for some of the finest amber notes in modern perfumery, which tells you what the plant carries inside it.

Where our clary sage comes from

Ours comes from France, where clary sage is grown as a field crop in the Drôme and across the hills of Provence, often alongside lavender. The plant flowers in July and is cut and distilled in the heat of the summer. The dry French season concentrates the sclareol in the flowering tops, and French clary sage is prized precisely for that amber depth. Clary sage from cooler, wetter places is greener and thinner and loses the warm finish that makes the French oil so useful in the heart of a fragrance.

How clary sage smells

Herbaceous with an amber finish. At first it is green, faintly bitter and tea like, with a lavender freshness. As it dries it becomes warm and softly balsamic, with a suggestion of hay, tobacco and clean amber. It bridges herbs and resins the way few materials can.

Clary sage in our chapters

• IHayalThe Crown · in the heart

  In Hayal it sits in the heart between the neroli and the resins of the base, the green amber that turns the crown of the tree from bright to warm.

• VIISultanat OudThe Deep Roots · in the heart

  In Sultanat Oud it is the aromatic centre of the heart, carrying the lavender of the opening down toward the sandalwood and oud.

A note from the atelier

I use clary sage where I need a heart that can hold light and shadow at once. It arrives as a herb and leaves as an amber, and in that journey it carries the whole composition with it.

Questions about clary sage