Rose (original)(1860)

A companion piece to Molinard's jasmine soliflore of the same year, this rose composition follows an identical bergamot-rose-musk-sandalwood structure, showcasing Grasse's other signature flower crop with the same single-minded restraint. Together, the two fragrances represent Molinard's core mid-19th-century output: unadorned, high-quality soliflores built on the two flowers, rose and jasmine, that would remain the backbone of French perfumery for the next century and beyond. Grasse's rose, distinct from the Damask rose grown in Bulgaria and Turkey, contributes a slightly different olfactory character, often described as more honeyed and less sharply green. As with the house's jasmine from the same period, this composition predates the synthetic-aromachemical revolution of the 1880s, meaning every note here would have come from genuine botanical extraction rather than laboratory synthesis. It stands as one of the clearest surviving examples of pre-modern, single-flower Grasse perfumery in Molinard's catalog.