The Néroliane quality

In the laboratory, our first approach is olfactory: does the essence look good, does it smell like what it is supposed to smell like? It declines its odorous identity. A vast sample library allows us to have our references in case of doubt, for an essence that we would need to remember, in nose. The alleged subjectivity of olfaction has little meaning in the identification of essential oils. Our approach is like that of a piano tuner, who looks for the right note. The tolerable margin of fluctuation is known and limited: nature plays, but rarely makes aberrations.

Once this first test is over, the time comes for physical and chemical analysis. The essence is deployed in its different constituents, which must evolve within well-established value ranges, but also maintain relationships between them that are true markers. The proportion of the constituents between them constitutes a signature of the identity much finer than the constituents themselves.

Finally, when we have gathered all this information, we return to olfaction to reassess the harmony of the essence. The whole is much more than the sum of its parts and deconstructing an essence is a necessary but not sufficient exercise. Just as the absence of disease does not certify health. There is an extra soul, born of the synergy of all these elements, and no doubt others that we do not see, that will make so that the essence that has been proposed to us will be approved or rejected.