OLFACTORY CAPTURES / Our exclusive creation process

We are not perfumers. We capture the essence of natural landscapes and distill its aromatic personality. Literally, we put landscapes in a bottle. But, what do natural landscapes smell like? The answer is almost always found in plants and their complex aromatic language. Plants do not behave in the same way in their natural habitats, charged as they are with diversity, as they do in cultivation.

We know that, and for us it makes a big difference.

That is why we go out there and gather them by surprise and off guard, in their own environment, to capture all their properties and benefits, as well as the true essence of the place.

Here it is how we do it:

PHASE 0 . PROSPECTING

It is not only about crossing the landscape but also about allowing it to break through to us. To let ourselves be transformed, instead of always thinking about how we will transform our environment.

So, the first thing to do is to spend time out there. To take our time. Because time is the most important ingredient in everything we do. Time to observe, to do a botanical study, noting plant families and densities, to talk with the local people, to feel. And last but not least, to write down the sensations and emotions provoked by the place, which will play a very important role in the later testing process.

This prospection must observe a one-year cycle. The environment is not the same in summer as in Winter. But also, it is not the same throughout the day, changing from dawn to midday to nightfall. Again, it’s a matter of time. To take all this into account, the prospecting phase takes at least 12 expeditions to the place that we want to capture. Once it has been well studied and observed (and of course, lived) we decide which season and hour of the day are the most representative of that particular landscape, and we start the process. Wild harvesting is ready to begin.

PHASE 1 . WILD HARVESTING

• Following our exclusive Sustainable Harvesting Protocol, designed by Sandra Saura Mas, our environmental biologist collaborator, we gather the plants in the wild, with most respect for the environment and the health of the plants.
• This is the closest thing to a “formulation” in the Olfactory Capture process. This is done with the hands, according to plant densities in order to reproduce the aromatic essence of the environment.

PHASE 2 . DISTILLING

• Everything comes together in the still. Only in this way could the resulting hydrolate and essential oil be a real Olfactory Capture.

PHASE 3 . EVABORATION

• With part of the gathered plants, we make tinctures in organic alcohol to be used as the alcoholic base for our Olfactory Capture. The scent and the water used for the mixture are the results of our previous distillation.
• Nothing else is added. There is no intervention in the final formulation on our part.
• We let the mixture rest for 20 days.

PHASE 4 . TESTING

• We take our Olfactory Capture and go back to the same place. We walk around, smell the air and compare it with what we have done.
• We check our first annotations, about the sensations and emotions provoked by the place, and check if they resemble the ones provoked by the Olfactory Capture.

If the Olfactory Capture we have is not satisfactory, then the whole process starts again with another wild harvest.

If it is satisfactory, then we have two options:

• It can become a new CAMÍ. A true Off Road Capture, 100% wild harvested with no intervention from our part.

• In order to be able to become a LANDSCAPE SCENT that we can reproduce year after year, we start a formal formulating process, with our Olfactory Capture as an olfactory literal reference.

For these captures, we only work with 100% natural essential oils of high quality from plants that grow naturally in the landscape that we seek to capture.