“A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet”… Shakespeare’s iconic dialogue in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ immortalised the romantic aura of this flower, cherished by emperors and kings and desired by lovers and women across all ages and cultures. Roses come in many colours and each colour has a different connotation. From symbolising love, friendship, fascination, innocence and respect to gratitude, enthusiasm and passion, roses are used to express it all. In fact, different shades of the red rose are supposed to indicate different intensities of affection!
Roses are not only soothing to the lover’s eye, but form the foundation of a large number of perfumes. The romance associated with this flower gives that lovey-dovey touch to all rose perfumes. Similar to its many colours and shades, it possesses a range of scents from woody, spicy and musky to anise, clove-like and fruity. Little wonder then that rose distillation for scents goes back to the 8th century. Sprinkling Rose water on guests has been in vogue since the time of the Roman empire and was used in the fountains in the town. However, rose water is very different from the rose oil used in perfumes.
There are three ways of rose oil extraction - steam distillation, solvent extraction and Supercritical carbon dioxide extraction. In the distillation method, crushed rose petals are steam distilled to produce rose oil (known as ‘attar’). In the second process, a solvent such as hexane is used to extract the aroma compounds. The third method uses supercritical carbon dioxide. Rose petals contain a miniscule quantity (approx. 0.02%) of rose essential oil. One can then imagine the costs involved, when it takes 10,000 kgs of roses to extract 1 kg of oil.
Rose oil has versatile uses in perfumery as it can be blended with almost every other fragrance to add richness to the scent.
Rose can be found in Blossom and Pleasure perfumes for women in the Hvnly collection.
Author: Sandipani Padhi