Scotch pine

Pine is the scent of cold air. Where the Mediterranean herbs smell of heat and stone, pine smells of a forest floor in the north, of resin cracking in the sun and needles underfoot. In Hayal it is the one cool breath among the spices and the blossom.

What scotch pine is

Scotch pine oil is steam distilled from the needles and twigs of Pinus sylvestris, the most widely distributed pine on earth, a tree that ranges from Scotland across Europe and Siberia to the Pacific. The oil is fresh and terpenic, built on alpha and beta pinene, with an earthy, slightly balsamic body and a dry green character that is more forest than furniture polish.

Where scotch pine grows

Our formula books record the species but not the country of this oil, and so I print no origin. Pinus sylvestris grows across the whole of northern Eurasia, and the oil is distilled in many countries along that range. The house rule is simple: where no origin is written down, none is claimed. What I can say is that the oil I use is the true needle oil of the Scots pine, with the dry, resinous, northern character that only that species has.

How scotch pine smells

Earthy, dry, green pine and woody. It is fresher and cleaner than the sweet resinous smell of pine sap, with a cool, almost minty clarity at the top and a dry woodiness underneath.

Scotch pine in our chapter

• IHayalThe Crown · in the heart

  In Hayal it is the cool green breath in the heart, the forest note that keeps the neroli and cinnamon from becoming too warm.

A note from the atelier

I placed pine in the crown of the tree because a crown lives in the wind. Hayal needed one note that smelled of air rather than of earth, and pine is that note.

Questions about scotch pine