When a New Zealand perfumer is asked to create a candle redolent of home, what does he come up with? For Isaac Sinclair it's a kowhai and cedar mix.
That got me thinking about how we bottle our memories and how smell is the most evocative of our senses. But is there any such thing as a New Zealand aroma? It depends, is my answer, but the experts I've met, including Sinclair, reckon there are some underlying influences. Not surprisingly, the bush and the sea figure large in our shared olfactory landscape, but so too will the immediate surrounds of your childhood.
When I first interviewed Sinclair a couple of years ago, he told me he grew up in the wooded Waitakeres and remembered the pungent gingerlily and dense, layered undergrowth. This gave him quite different early influences to the perfumers he trained with in France, who were grounded in a classic floral tradition. Coming from Christchurch, I was surrounded by English-style gardens and remember spring flowers and the daphne bush by the front door. Not natives, but endemic to my nose.
When Mexican perfumer Carlos Huber of the boutique Arquiste line visited Auckland he told me the ocean and the smell of wet, greenery during a run in the Domain where the most obvious aromas he encountered.
