Jasmin (original)(1860)

Another of Molinard's early Grasse-made soliflores, this jasmine composition follows the same template as the house's rose from a decade earlier: bergamot opens, a single jasmine note dominates the heart, and musk and sandalwood provide a discreet base. Grasse's jasmine, hand-picked at dawn before the day's heat could diminish its scent, was and remains among the most prized floral raw materials in perfumery, and a dedicated soliflore built around it would have been a genuine luxury item for Molinard's 1860s clientele. The soliflore format continued to dominate perfumery output through the mid-19th century, prevailing until the synthetic aromachemicals of the 1880s and 1890s, coumarin, ionones, aldehydes, allowed perfumers to build more abstract, composed fragrances rather than showcase single flowers. As one of Molinard's founding-era jasmine expressions, it reflects the house's direct access to Grasse's flower fields during the golden age of natural raw-material perfumery. It remains a useful reference point for understanding how simply, and how expensively, perfumers of the period could work with a single, exceptional ingredient.