Davana

Davana is a small silver herb that smells of dried apricots, black currant and old rum. Nothing about the plant prepares you for the oil. It is one of the strangest and most beautiful materials in the natural palette, and it changes on every skin it touches.

What davana is

Davana oil is steam distilled from the flowering tops of Artemisia pallens, a delicate silver green herb of the wormwood family. The oil is rich in davanone and a family of related molecules found in no other plant, which give it a fruity, boozy, slightly camphoraceous character unlike any other natural. It is famous among perfumers for smelling differently on each person, taking on the wearer's chemistry more readily than almost any other material.

Where our davana comes from

Ours comes from India, the only country where davana is grown commercially. The herb is cultivated in the south, in the dry, warm fields of Karnataka around Mysore, where it is sown after the monsoon and harvested in bloom a few months later, then distilled at once. The plant is fragile and the season is short, and the whole world's supply comes from these few fields. The Indian climate gives an oil with the full fruity, dried fruit depth that the material is known for.

How davana smells

Fruity, berry, black currant and dried fruit, woody and slightly camphoraceous. It opens with a burst of ripe fruit and liqueur, then settles into something softer, like fruit leather and warm wood, with a faint herbal bitterness underneath.

Davana in our chapter

• VIIIRoyale OudThe Taproot · in the opening

  In Royale Oud it opens the chapter beside bergamot, juniper and cardamom, the dried fruit sweetness that leads the way toward the osmanthus and rose of the heart.

A note from the atelier

I placed davana at the opening of Royale Oud because the taproot of a tree stores sugar, and I wanted the first breath of the deepest chapter to taste of something that had been kept a long time.

Questions about davana