Renaissance of a Rose CENTIFOLIA : La Baptistine - PERFUME from times past and rose of these days

PERFUME from times past and rose of these days

Il était une fois… Once upon a time, a full-bodied May rose, which exhaled a facetted bouquet from which one could extract the perfume, a rarity in the world of fragrant roses.
The tanners and gloves installed in Grasse since the Middle Ages for the quality and abundance of spring waters, master distillation and extraction of plant juices from the seventeenth century. They chose her for the perfume she sets beautifully on leathers and skins.

Fragonard, a Grasse painter from the court of Versailles, associated the rose of his city with courtly romance. His talent did the rest and the gardens of the Petit Trianon were decorated with arches of fragrant May roses, from Grasse, described in the encyclopedia by the painter of roses Pierre-Joseph Redoute (1759-1840). The Rose fragrance became the symbol of the great century, ambassador of French charm in all the courts of Europe by the perfume of the hands coming out from gloves made in Grasse.
Then the whims of time and illness eliminated her from all exploitation. Patrick Süskynd (1985) describes the story, which has barely been romanticized in "Perfume".
Its culture developed from the Orient to Florence and Montpellier to settle in Grasse under the name of Rose of Provence at the end of the Middle Ages and to make the fortune of Master Glove makers-Perfumers.

The saga of the rose of May continues...
We had to wait ... The Rose disappeared, Baptistin made her reborn!

"Since 1880, there had been no creation of roses for Perfumery. Around 1950, my father, Baptistin Giorgis, worked for Guerlain. He was a specialist in rose extractions at "Bertrand-Frères", a producer of raw materials. His personal olfactory research led him to study ancient texts describing the composition of perfumes elaborated in the eighteenth century. He realized that the rose of that time had disappeared. He understood that if no one recreated this plant, the natural perfume of this rose would no longer exist. He alone was both Nose and Rosomane.

Baptistin had a chance to rediscover the fragrance of missing roses if he revived a Centifolia 100 petals from his parents. To create a new rose, with the times past perfume, he fertilized the flowers barely hatched from the old roses of the Convent of the Visitation with the stamens taken from the simple flowers with broad fragrant corollas of some wild bushes of roses with great development situated behind the medieval cathedral.
He was waiting for the principle of the recessive gene to restore him to an identical parent by successive crossings of the descendants, sowing the seeds of the fruits, rose hips, resulting from their union.
For 15 years, he obtained hundreds of roses each year, to wait until the first flowers. His talent of Nose finally selected a rose, to affirm that he had rediscovered the fragrance of a true centifolia pink compatible with the ancient formulas and able to perfume the leather. His happiness shone when a rose gave him a bouquet of scents in perfect harmony with the composition called "perfume of court", he offered it to his daughter Roseline, happy to have found it. It was in 1967, he was 39 years old and died that year ...
He finally gave birth to this rose without having material evidence at the time to confirm his opinion by a chromatographic analysis. "

To the next generation ...

Born rue Sans Peur, in the heart of the medieval city in the old mansion that had housed family tanneries. Roseline, daughter of Baptistin Giorgis "went to the garden" to see the flowers grow and celebrate the harvest.
Since her early childhood the ability to see the odors in color allowed her to join her father and Jean-Paul Guerlain at the laboratory of the Factory, amused or inspired by his colorful comments and paintings offered for their research.
Very interested by all these powerful palettes of strong smells, the incredible hubbub of the human activities related to the extractions of the plants, and the enormous size of the machines, she observed the wheezing vapors, the pots and giant threshers! This excessiveness in everything was for her the world of dreams, of surreality. The source from which to draw the inspiration of her life.

After a thorough university education, History of art and archeology, then plastic arts, she made a career as a visual artist-designer around the world, color prescriber, specialist in pigment techniques she designs settings for large heights in nightclubs and churches, also intervening on the old musical instruments with production methods of varnishes and ancestral colors which lead today to the manufacture of the perfumed painting.
In 2004, she decided to devote herself to the rosebush to consider a new variety recognition. In honor of her father, it is registered under the name of Baptistine Centifolia. The French breeding certificate is issued in 2009. The European varietal recognition confirms the obtention in 2013.
The support of the Brazilian Natura group allowed Roseline Giorgis full-field experimentation in Grasse and Isle sur la Sorgue proving its Provençal quality and its territorial influence.
In Grasse, as in 1880, the varietal recognition brings to perfume, the originality of a new absolute oil and newfound abilities of leather and vellum. It is with joy that Roseline cultivates it in Provence and now in Egypt and Tunisia.

FARMER - PERFUMER

With the same daring as her father, she brings the proof of their dreams by the originality of the new absolute oil with the powerful notes of heart and the regained capacities of pregnance on the leathers and vellums are a novelty brought to the perfumery.
The gardens of the Rose and the Perfumer, 1268, chemin de Reydet at Isle sur la Sorgue invite you to visit and participate in the superb harvest, in May each year with three tons of roses picked at full basket and carried at arm’s reach in a romantic cart every night. Demonstrations of distillation and cooking of flowers are organized in the garden. Its 3 tons of roses allow to produce 8.8 lb to 11 lb of absolute magnificent. The big Noses of quality niche perfumes as well as those of the great industrial perfumes use the absolutes in their compositions.

THE HOME OF THE ROSE

Roseline and her Rose Baptistine have their case. About twenty years ago, Roseline came to Fontaine de Vaucluse and chance made that the most beautiful house in the village was for sale.
Small hotel with Palladian proportions renovated in the nineteenth century, its beautifully carved facade hides treasures. On the side of the house, glass roof and wrought iron terrace open on the nearby Sorgue. It houses a very old well. This is where our alchemist set up her laboratory and the olfactory library of her trained perfumer's organ.

HER BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY

In 2010, the workshop-laboratory is brought up to the standards of AFSSAPS. She can finally realize floral waters exactly as in Grasse, following the ancestral rules of her family of glove perfumers.

Roseline draws from the natural spring of Fontaine de Vaucluse, in the hollow of the rock in the well situated in the house, 36 feet deep. The purity of this water allows an optimal distillation of fragile molecules of the rose (with antioxidant properties). To make 66 gallons of rose water, she needs 441 lb of roses.
She takes on her blouse and creates, always based on the Rose B. : Perfumes, oils and ointments, beauty cream, as well as sweets and now scented paint
Here, we inhale the dye of benzoin, the hydrolats, the essential oils which compose a perfume to understand their blending at the SHOWROOM of the Home of the rose of the original and precious preparations of perfumes and floral waters home, accompany a declination of products based of roses: condiments, salt and perfumed sugar. candied petals, roses in jelly, syrup and liqueur, rose calis, chocolates and vinegar.

Roseline loves the rose with passion and offers conferences and knowledge sharing experiences by appointment all year round.