process
Attar
Rosa damascena
Origin
Traditional attar is produced by hydro-distilling flowers — most classically the damask rose — into a base of sandalwood oil, a craft centred for centuries in Kannauj in northern India. The Bulgarian and Turkish rose valleys also supply much of the world's rose distillate.
The smell
A deep, almost liquid sweetness of rose pushed to its richest extreme — petals warmed until they nearly turn to jam. Beneath the floral lushness runs something darker and waxier, faintly spiced, that keeps it from being merely pretty. It is rose distilled into velvet, intimate and slow to fade.
Key quality
A co-distilled botanical essence that captures a flower's soul in an oily, enduring form.
Historical use
Attar-making flourished under the Mughal courts, where legend credits the Empress Nur Jahan with discovering rose oil floating on rosewater. The town of Kannauj has distilled attars for over four hundred years, supplying the perfumes of Indian royalty and the wider Islamic world long before European eau de cologne existed.
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