Tag: Japanese

From Sencha to Spritz: Japanese Tea Scents

Japanese tea traditions have captivated the Western imagination for centuries. This fascination has inevitably found its way into the world of perfumery, where master perfumers have sought to capture not just the aroma of Japanese teas, but the very essence of the ceremonies that surround them. Escaping into the contemplative world of tea appreciation via scent reminds us to pause, to breathe deeply, and to appreciate the beauty in simplicity.

Whether worn during a hectic workday or a quiet evening at home, these perfumes carry with them the spirit of the tea ceremony: an invitation to find tranquillity amidst chaos, to create a moment of harmony in our often increasingly discordant lives.

At the heart of Japanese tea traditions are several distinctive varieties, each with its own character and place in the cultural landscape. Sencha, accounting for about 80% of Japan’s tea production, offers a refreshing, grassy flavour with a slight bitterness and sweet finish. This everyday tea is what you’ll find in most Japanese households and restaurants. Matcha, perhaps the most recognised Japanese tea globally (which we’ve already had a blog post dedicated to exploring matcha scents), is made from shade-grown tea leaves ground into a fine powder and whisked with hot water until frothy. Its intense, umami-rich flavour and vibrant green colour make it the centrepiece of formal tea ceremonies.

 

 

 

 

Gyokuro, another premium shade-grown tea, is meticulously cultivated to increase chlorophyll and amino acids, resulting in a sweeter, more complex flavour profile than sencha. Hojicha, a roasted green tea, offers a nutty, caramel-like aroma with significantly less caffeine than other varieties, making it suitable for evening enjoyment. Genmaicha, a blend of green tea with roasted rice, delivers a toasty, popcorn-like note that balances the grassiness of the tea leaves.

These distinct tea varieties, with their nuanced aromas and cultural significance, have provided rich inspiration for perfumers seeking to create fragrances that transport the wearer to the contemplative world of Japanese tea ceremonies. The challenge lies not merely in reproducing the scent of the tea itself, but in capturing the atmosphere of the ceremony – the tatami mats, the silence, the mindfulness, the aesthetic minimalism that defines the experience.

 

 

 

 

 

Maison Margiela’s Replica Matcha Meditation [£36.85 for 30ml eau de toilette thefragranceshop.com] offers another interpretation of Japanese tea culture. This green, floral fragrance features top notes of bergamot, mandarin and green tea; middle notes of matcha, orange flower absolute and jasmine; and base notes of moss, white chocolate and cedar essence. The perfume aims to transport the wearer to a clear day in Tokyo, basking in the serene pleasure of sipping hot matcha tea as sunlight streams through the windows. The contrast between the hot tea and cool, fresh outdoorsy notes creates a multidimensional experience that mirrors the sensory complexity of the tea ceremony.

 

 

 

 

SHIRO, a Japanese brand now available in the UK, offers a White Tea Eau de Parfum [£49 for 40ml eau de parfum, shiro-shiro.uk] that has become one of Japan’s most popular perfume collections. Understated yet characterful, beautifully balanced by a blend of fresh citrus and gently elegant, steamily soothing tea notes, this fragrance captures the delicate nature of white tea with a distinctly Japanese sensibility. We love the fact that you can layer the scent in bath salts, body milk and hand serums, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elizabeth Arden’s White Tea Eau de Parfum [£19.50 for 30ml eau de parfum elizabetharden.co.uk] offers a perhaps more accessible entry point into tea-inspired fragrances, meanwhile. Crafted using VivaScentz technology to harmonise key notes, this perfume encourages a sense of wellbeing in its wearer – a goal not dissimilar from that of the Japanese tea ceremony. With heart notes of rose, mate leaves, sun-dried Venezuelan tonka bean, amberwood and musk, it creates a serene atmosphere that invites contemplation.

 

 

 

 

 

Floraïku is a house whose very essence is steeped in the ceremonial aspects of Japanese traditions. Their first collection, Secret Teas and Spices, draws inspiration directly from the Ô Cha ceremony – the ritual preparation of tea that encompasses invitation, preparation, presentation, and tasting. Two standout fragrances from this collection capture the essence of Japanese tea ceremonies with remarkable authenticity: I Am Coming Home [£275 for 50ml eau de parfum + Travel Case + Travel Size 10ml + cap uk.floraiku.com], with its nurturing white tea extract juxtaposed by a flourish of ginger and cardamom oils, and The Moon And I [£275 for 50ml eau de parfum + Travel Case + Travel Size 10ml + cap uk.floraiku.com] featuring the ceremonial heart of matcha tea extract complemented by herbaceous mate absolute and comfortingly grounded cedarwood oil.

 

What makes these tea-inspired fragrances so compelling is their ability to tap into the philosophical underpinnings of the Japanese tea ceremony. The principles of wabi (rustic simplicity), sabi (appreciation of imperfection and transience), and yugen (mysterious grace) find their expression in perfumes that balance simplicity with depth, familiarity with mystery. Where will your journey begin? Take it one sip and spritz at a time…

 

Written by Suzy Nightingale

Guerlain Sakura Cherry Blossom Limited Edition – ‘When spring is reborn’

Since the year 2000, every spring the limited edition Guerlain Sakura Cherry Blossom is a breathtaking moment to pause and immerse ourselves in beauty, and oh how welcome that chance can be. Just as Japanese rituals around cherry blossom have taken place for centuries, Guerlain’s annual celebration of scent, exquisite artisan craftsmanship and nature combine in the most breathtaking way…

Says Guerlain: ‘For the House, this is the perfect opportunity to combine original artistic collaboration with the most virtuosic creators of artistic crafts. This year is an especially outstanding occasion, as it marks the 170th anniversary of the iconic Bee Bottle.

For its precious 2023 Millésime, Guerlain has asked the Ateliers Vermont, a prestigious Parisian embroidery house, to create the magical adornment of its Bee Bottle. A delicate cherry tree branch in blossom, nestled on a grosgrain bow, which expresses both the peerless expertise of French Haute Couture and the timeless poetry of the most moving of Japanese traditions.

 

 

To celebrate a poetic ritual the Japanese call hanami (literally “flower viewing”), friends and families get together to admire sakuras. Under the cherry trees, the delicate blooms fall without wilting, “flower rafts” float on streams, and petals flutter in the breeze like delicate butterflies.’

The bottles are snapped up by collectors, each of them hand-adorned and art pieces to treasure forever, and each year we think: oh, this is the most beautiful version yet! Of course, the fragrance itself must reflect the ethereal, life-affirming beauty of the cherry blossom spectacle itself:

‘Perfumers must therefore invent a fragrance which can express both the infinite grace of its flower-laden branches and the emotion of those who gaze at them,’ Guerlain explain.

 

 

‘First, bergamot, an olfactory signature of the House, sheds its golden light on the fragrance. A fresh, subtle green tea accord recalls another of Japan’s ancient rituals, while threading the luminous overture with the heart of the fragrance through its floral tones. In the heart notes, the Guerlain Perfumers, artisans of the sublime, have embroidered the delicate petals of the sakura blossom one by one onto the precious olfactory materials of their palette… Tender facets of almond, cherry, and powdery lilac, enhanced by a pearl-white jasmine, conjure their airy corollas. Carried by a breeze of white musks, these flowers fluttering on slender branches herald the rebirth of spring with the most delicate of fragrances.’

 

Guerlain Sakura Cherry Blossoms is priced at €700 in Guerlain boutiques

 

Clive Christian – the art of Matsukita – an interview with artist Yukako Sakakura

Taking inspiration from their unique heritage, Clive Christian recently celebrated their beautiful Matsukita fragrance in artful style at an exhibition in Mayfair’s Jovoy perfumery. We were honoured to catch up with the world-famous artist Yukako Sakakura and talk to her about creating the most stunning multi-layered painting directly inspired by smelling the scent…

 

Matsukita was inspired ‘by a fabled Japanese princess who awed the Victorian royal court with her elegance and grace’ and first launched in 1892 by Crown Perfumery, advertised with lavish, hand painted illustrations. Clive Christian have dipped back into this intriguing heritage to recreate some iconic fragrances with a distinctly modern feel – the meeting place of historic references and scents that have a certain classic style, but are thoroughly contemporary in character when you wear them.

With this juxtaposition in mind, today Matsukita ‘has been reimagined to capture this illusive elegance.’ A deliciously woody chypre, there’s an invigorating freshness wafting around the top notes to keep this breezy and simply beautiful. Green bergamot, pink pepper and flecks of nutmeg swoop to the floral, woody heart of Chinese imperial jasmine infused with refined notes of black tea. The smoke dispersing to reveal an amber-rich base swathed in whisper-soft musk add further to the ‘sense of mystery and grace’ they hoped to capture of the original.

  

 

 Further expressing their heritage in modern ways, Clive Christian has long heralded contemporary artists, and they were delighted to partner with artist Yukako for a sensory collaboration around the scent of Matsukita, the experience of smelling which formed the inspiration for her extraordinary painting, ‘You Close Your Eyes to See Our Spring.’ Yukako explains: ‘I’ve always liked painting natural elements, because flowers link with emotions. In Japan we use these natural elements in art a lot, so it therefore feels quite natural for me to use these symbols to express feelings.’

‘I love to use layers within my work, so many I sometimes lose count! It’s usually 50 plus layers, anyway. I finish my flowers first and paint over the whole surface, then I change the shape of the flowers with further layers. If I didn’t have the layers, everything looks too flat to me, it’s not wavy enough! I want to make sure all the flowers are kind of singing the same song, it’s a way of breathing life into the landscape; so, I just paint over and over again until it feels like all the flowers are breathing with the same rhythm. To gauge when it’s finished, I must sit in front of the painting for ages, sometimes five hours (with a cup of coffee), looking closely and making sure everything is doing the right thing.’

 

‘I smelled the fragrance first, and then wore it as I painted, it helped feed my imagination and it’s as though I felt the energy of the scent go down my arm into the paintbrush. I know that might sound strange to some, but I started learning calligraphy at the age of three, and that’s all about imagination, getting to know what kind of brush marks you can make…’

 

 

‘In calligraphy, you learn that before you make a single mark on the page you have to spend time imagining it all in your head, and then you join those energies of thought and process. For my Matsukita painting, it was all about smelling the fragrance and connecting to the emotions it gave me, then translating these into images, and they flow from my brain to the brush. You know, I did all my studying about art in U.K. I’ve not done any art studies in Japan, and I find that when I’m in the mood for 100% concentration, I speak English, even in my head.’

  

 

‘I find I talk to colours [Yukako giggles] and I have changing relationships with them. For instance, I used to hate yellow years ago, and it would creep into my paintings sometimes and I’d get angry with it for spoiling them and tell it to go away, but now I absolutely love yellow! I knew I wanted yellow in this as soon as I smelled Matsukita. I must explain that I don’t talk to the colours out loud. It’s all in my head – it’s part of the way I communicate with the world and translate my feelings to the canvas. Again, while smelling the scent I knew the roses must dance first in the painting. I don’t let anyone in my studio when I’m painting because it’s disrupting to my conversation with the painting itself! My family all think I’m very weird, but it’s the way I work…’

 

 

What an incredible privilege it was to meet this visionary artist and see her work in the flesh – for seeing pictures of the paintings really cannot convey their extraordinary depth of feeling and movement. You really can sense the ‘sway’ and ‘dance’ of the flowers and petals in the breeze, standing in front of the picture itself. And isn’t that the way of fragrance itself, too? Talking about individual notes can only bring you so far – to really know a fragrance and feel its emotional connection, you must wear it on your skin. And we urge you try Matsukita this way, to truly feel the character of the scent yourself…

 Clive Christian Matsukita £350 for 50ml at Jovoy

 Written by Suzy Nightingale