Grain de Plaisir

Here is the transcript from my most recent YouTube video: A thought-provoking composition from the "Les Aromatiques" collection of Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier, Grain de Plaisir was composed by Jean-Francois Laporte, founder & perfumer of L'Artisan Parfumeur and subsequently MPG. Grain de Plaisir opens with a fanfare of lemon, more like preserved lemon, or even lemon curd, lemon tarts. A river of zest, all-encompassing, unctuous, soon being joined by garden herb and celery stock, not S.T.A.L.K. but rather, S.T.O.C.K. Cooked, with spruce and fir tips, maybe some rosemary and thyme. The conifers amplify on my skin, smelling more like their sap, the exudate sticky, tacky, dry, but then the attention focuses on spent pine needles, or pine straw, as it were, on the forest floor. Perhaps it should be collected for a flower bed? I have a strong connection with the scent of pine straw on the forest floor, as we had a grove of Eastern White Pine behind my house as a kid. There is visceral scent memory here, it really gives me a pause in the most wonderful way. Who would have thought that a celery accord could be perceived as pine straw to my nose? Nevertheless, I love it. It dries down seamlessly into vetiver and resins, further crystallizing the sensation of pine straw on the forest floor, heated by the dry sun. Magical.

The fresh scent I didn't know I needed. So wild to look at the note pyramid having tried this fragrance. What I got before looking was something fresh with Australian sandalwood underneath. Speaking as someone repelled by the very idea of fresh fragrances - a bunch of nasty aromachemicals that smell like laundry soap - this is a revelation. Even knowing the notes I can't pick out anything but the sandalwood and that part is close to the skin and easily avoided if I don't sniff the spot where I dabbed. Otherwise I'm enveloped in this beautifully blended cloud of what I can only describe as freshness. This is another one of those masterful MPG scents that you simply have to try. The notes are meaningless. I find it beautiful and completely unique.

Lemon green celery rooty vetiver... vegetable soup? Hmm.. definitely on the bizarre side of things, a woody aromatic veering towards vegetable stock territory. Sofrito, some may be familar with the combination of carrot, celery and onion as the foundation of italian cooking. Add watered down stock and squeeze some lemon at the end and there you have it.. a remedy for the seasonal cold according to my grandmother. The opening of this fragrance is very challenging to me, the tart lemon against vegetable celery and rooty almost onion like vetiver joining forces only gets more intensely culinary when even some salty facets start manifesting adding fuel to the fire. About 10-15 mins in it is definitely settles with more coniferous qualities surfacing, but at that point i am already done with it. A few hours later and woody vetiver is in the forefront. Thought provoking? Perhaps. Strange? definitely.

Incredible opening, musty dry down. But such is the curse of so many lemon fragrances.

I like this perfume a bit. It starts out quite promising ... fresh, green, citrus-y, but a unique take on it. The drydown stays pretty much the same, except the mint starts to come to the forefront with a vengeance and totally ruins it for me. It felt too much like I had spilled a mojito on myself. And with mint, it also verges a bit on the medicinal. So, it's a pass. If you're looking for something like this but without the mint, I'd say Bigarade Concentrée by Frederic Malle is similar and better. It's one I own and absolutely love. And the hunt for the MPG that truly suits me continues...

Interesting that we all have different takes on this perfume. I can't detect any celery or aldehydes on my skin, though there is some saltiness. For me the main accord is a low-pitched lemon — juice rather than zest — with mint and a subtle, sinuous, resinous mastic and fir base. A little lavender yes and a very gentle vetiver that grows in influence over time. Overall it's light in tone, very Mediterranean and I agree with others, wobbling on the border of clean (lemon, mint) and dirty (sticky mastic, fir). An offbeat aromatic for spring / summer daytime. Unsure at this point if it will grow on me or not.

The perfumes of MPeG labelled ‘Le Aromatiques’ (Garrigue (1988), Grain de Plaisir (1988), and later Fraîche Badiane (1994) and Baime (2000)) offer an excellent glimpse in to Laporte’s inspiration to pursue the power of materials. Vintage bottles of this series came with a botanical picture of the ingredient in focus as if these perfumes were required to fit into a well-stocked and organised kitchen. Here, Laporte creates fragrances that are concerned with herbs, spices and citrus. In concise style, the MPeG website states: “the Aromatiques, with essences of plants and aromatic herbs, are highly refreshing and reviving.” In Grain de Plaisir Laporte offers his most unusual composition of the collection, giving us a fragrance focused upon the unlikely material of celery. In case you were confused, the original bottle has a bushy celery stem on front with the words ‘Le Celeri’. This is a striking perfume that will jar the nose with utter surprise. Aldehydes, lemon and celery fizz out of the bottle. A cloud of sparkling, salty, effervescence. This unlikely opening gives an experience that has no other parallel in any perfume I’ve tried, the effect is of a green celery stem being snapped under your nose. The celery and lemon are expertly handled. Laporte accentuates celery’s character, using it to splice precisely the two contrasting characters of lemon – its fresh, bright, tartness, on one side and its deeper, sweetened, zest on the other. The savoury salt of celery works like the lip of an ice cold margarita – it's upfront, not just in its obviousness but in its olfactory chronology. It is as if you are forced to smell through the celery to get to the other ingredients. After the aldehydes have dissipated and as the lemon freshness recedes, a different aspect of celery is revealed. Celery seed. Mastic, myrtle and lavender are intelligently blended to delicately cradle the fragrance of celery seed whilst taming its less obliging characteristics. Laporte is able to bring out the dry, herbaceous character of the celery seed, singular in its aromatics, whilst tempering it for the wearer, giving a more refined experience than might be expected of this humble seed. At this stage there is a hum of dried herbs, though none are mentioned in the notes, and all this is pinned down with a more classical base of fine resins, a dry woodiness, and the merest hint of vetiver lightened with musks. Resins, woods and vetiver might sound like the makings of a deep and robust finish, but Laporte’s concentration wavers not for one second - these materials are used only to the extent that they can extend the savoury transparency of celery to the end. MPeG’s very own website describes this element most effectively when they say the base notes are used to balance “the tonic effect of our niche perfume.” So what’s in a name? Grain of Pleasure – celery? Speaking about Laporte after his death, Jean Paul Millet Lage commented that ‘Jean was a great gardener and quite a chef.’ Although many would know of the centrality of the garden to Laporte’s work (for example, his final project in perfumery after retiring at MPeG was to establish ‘Le Jardin du Parfumeur’ a botanical experience in Burgundy that he curated for the public), there is much less in the archives to assess the importance of the kitchen to his work as perfumer. Grain des Plaisir, however, and the rest of ‘Les Aromatiques’ give some obvious insight. In a traditional stock, celery fortifies and quenches the liquor. It’s savouriness braces the carrot and onion perfectly ensuring their union doesn’t get overly sweet and flabby. Celery is about balance. Its presence is required for the chefs delicate hand to be appreciated; the way an ensemble of vegetables and other aromatic herbs can brought together in a way that heightens their finest assets, elevates the whole. For its ability to induce the most simple of pleasures, no matter how mundane the offering, celery is essential to every soup. Laporte, it is clear, understands this very well. His ability to translate a study of this material into the language of fine perfumery, and to astonishing effect, is pure genius. Laporte gives us a dramatic organoleptic portait of the least sexy and fashionable ingredient in the kitchen and shows us how every aromatic has a place. In our rapid, over-hyped fragrant new millennium, the impulse of Laporte’s – to give transparency and justice to the materials we use – has, if anything, only increased. The claim to materials in the naming of perfumes has become so common place that the move has ironically come to stand for laziness in brand image, the paradoxical banality of ‘mainstream niche’. But Laporte’s project was never really ‘niche’ in the first place. His approach to perfumery could not be further from formulaic-marketing-optimisation-mechanics. Laporte was about surprise. ‘Olfactory shock’ was the dynamo in his relationship to fragrance. Grain de Plaisir presents one such shock. Spending time with it is a challenge he offers us. But compared to the dedication required to so intimately understand a material like celery – no less the attempt to express it fragrantly - Laporte's challenge comes to us more as a gift. This is Laporte’s ‘Grain de Plaisir’. con-scent.com

This is one of the best use of celery note you can ever find on the market (honorable mention to Racine Carrere by @anatolelebreton and Vetiver by @lorenzovilloresi Grain de Plaisir is part of the “Les Aromatiques” collection, a collection of fresh herbal fragrances. Grain de Plaisir (Seed of Pleasure) is one of the most daring fragrances in the market. The seed (grain) would be recognized by French people as celery. The idea of using celery in a perfume is quite strange but it has happened before. Point is that never has celery been put in the centre of composition. Grain de Plaisir opens with a thick, strong lemon note, the kind of note most people would associate with Lifesavers candy (or Lemon Pledge). The lemon here is un-etherial, un-apologetic and very very very culinary. Like grating the zest off of 10 lemons. Oily and bitter. Soon after the first impressions the curious celery note comes into play. It is hard to describe how exactly this smells. It is not the smell of celery seeds, not even the smell of celery. It is the increment of flavour added to a sauce when celery is thrown in to the mix. The end result is not foody but it is herbal. Like a garden of aromatics. There could be thyme, rosemary, myrthle, and the very green lentisque. The magic starts when the thick citrus and herbal celery are joined by a bitter pine smell and a hint of spruce. Although the composition is bitter and earthy it manages to infuse a strange happy vibe. It is like the happiness one feels when digging in the garden, pruning shrubs, getting their fingernails dirty with nature. It dries down seamlessly into vetiver and resins, further crystallizing the sensation of pine straw on the forest floor, heated by the dry sun. Simple, raw fun. IG @alexolympia6

Grain De Plaisir is pretty bizarre indeed. It's all about lemon and celery with herbal and woody undertones. Very aromatic, somehow compelling but maybe a bit too odd. This is the kind of fragrance that smells good (well, sort of) but I would never feel comfortable to wear. Let me put it simple, would you wear your celery salad in pinzimonio? Rating: 7/10 (for the smell) 5/10 (for wearability)

This opens as a pleasant, fresh unisex fragrance, and then after a few minutes.. it's true natural reveals itself. Salty, masculine, a little grimy, but not terrible. I agree it borders clean and dirty. The spices are last, and I even pick up a little curry in the dry down. I had initially intended this fragrance for me, a woman, but will instead try it on my husband.

Not sure if its the celery (never a note/taste I am fond of) and that its then blended with something sweet (resin??) and the lemon but for me this is repellent. Bizarrely herbal yes but in totally the wrong way, I can ́t understand why anyone would ever wear let alone purchase this.

wonderful fragrance. different. exciting. worth the investment!