Making scents of summer

Despite the best efforts of the perfume industry, the evocative smells of summer have to be experienced first hand to capture their essence, writes Alanna Gallagher.

'Nothing is more memorable than a smell," wrote poet and author Diane Ackerman, "One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains . . . "

The most welcome part of summer for this writer was never the temperate weather but, like Ackerman, the olfactory overload that greets each hazy morning and every dusky evening.

It smells of freedom. Growing up it offered endless possibilities, when out west it was smoky evening smells of beach bonfires and the clean salty sense of well-being after a dip in the Atlantic all blended together with the soft sweet smells of fuchsia and the whin bushes.

In town it was the heady fragrance of suburban night stock and lily-of-the-valley marred by the fetid tones of the city centre after its collective Saturday night out.

Donegal-based poet and novelist Cathal O'Searcaigh recalls the smell of his first orange. "It's my strongest memory of summer. I got my first orange at about the age of four. It had the yellow succulence of the evening sun. I thought I was eating the sun in a Proustian way. I felt I was dripping its orangey juice all over the mountains. Oranges were rare, we didn't have the proliferation of fruit we have now.

"Another aroma is that of white water lilies - of going out at night as a young teenager picking these white water lilies from a dark lake under a bright moon. I was reading about the east and to me these lilies had the heady smell of the oriental lotus flower. The lilies seemed illuminated from within by the bright opal moon glittering over Errigal. For me they smelled of incense like that you get in a church. Maybe I associated them with something sacred. They were so delicate, so transient, so beautiful. I associate beautiful things with impermanence. Lying on the spongy earth below a glittering blanket of heaven above the smell of the loamy bog mixed with the lilies was exhilarating."

The bog itself is another olfactory evocation for O'Searcaigh. "For hill farmers, turf-cutting time was a very special time, whole families would work their bogs together. They resembled an impressionistic painting, the black and white of the people against the beautiful purple haze of the heather. The simple ritual of tea-making in the bog seemed to take on all the strong odours of the surrounding landscape, the smoky tangs of the fire, the perfume of the bog myrtle and the heady honey lavender mixed with coconut of the heather and whins. Drinking tea was our only continental eating experience in those days as we sat on this vast bog boulevard Frenching it up to a large extent."

The bouquet of country roses also played a part in his past. "Their strong smell reminded me of early century plump, fleshy-smelling, country girls, while the smell of wild honeysuckle, the sweet smell of it clinging to stone walls, its wan whitish colour, reminded me of the delicate hands of some frail girl trying to climb a wall to see what's on the other side." For O'Searcaigh these smells of summer were fragrances from his adolescence. "They awakened in me an awareness of my own sexuality, the lush stench of growth, and the greenness associated with my sexuality. The steamy, strong smells of ox-eye daisies tormented me as they seemed to be winking at me in a come-on-ya way."

For Arthur Burnham, the nose behind Fragrances of Ireland's Inis, a cologne for men and women, who spent 10 years in Grasse, the world headquarters of the perfume industry, "the greatest summer smell is orange flowers and noble bergamot. It makes me smile." Burnham's opportunity to study in France happened accidentally.

"After finishing my studies a friend of my father's asked me to come and see him in France. He owned factories that made perfume. To me it sounded like a three-month holiday on the French Riviera. I wasn't going to say no. I was utterly enchanted. I got drunk on jasmine, high on orange flowers." Burnham was invited by Fragrances of Ireland in 1997 to create their new fragrance.

"I flew into Knock airport, landed atop a stony mountain where I was greeted by David and Peter Sellars. When I got west of Knock the fragrances I recall are mossy smells, watery, and a bit woody with hints of pine and the faint, sweet delicate scent of the fuchsias growing wild along the side of the road. In England these are preserved carefully in manicured gardens."

When it came to Inis, the perfume house wanted something that would capture the energy of the sea and would appeal to both men and women. "Coming from England, which was grey and smoky, Ireland smelt altogether rural and fresh. The smells were lush and green. My preconceptions were huge Atlantic rollers, sea swells but when the FOI guys took me to Dog's Bay in Roundstone in Co Galway, what I experienced was utter calm.

"It was magical, this immense semicircle of pristine white sand, with not a building in sight except for a few crofts, and the sun shining brilliantly on the water, creating all the colours of the Caribbean, the deepest blues and greens.

"I paced a bit to and fro. I was absolutely silent. I try to avoid preconceptions and had to have a bit of a rethink. And then suddenly, like in Pygmalion, I just got it. By Jove! I got it. It is woody, grassy, with florals and a fairly big sea smell." Inis now sells 120,000 bottles per annum worldwide.

Curraun-based John Mickie Gallagher, a lobster fisherman, recalls the robust smell of misty mornings with the wind blowing in from Bill's Rock, located in the heart of Clew Bay, Co Mayo. "The air would smell different depending on which way the wind was blowing. If it was a westerly wind it would be full of the smell of rotting seaweed. Out on the boats another distinct odour was that of the rotting bait for the lobster pots, usually a mix of pollack and wrass. The lobster pots themselves smelt of weed and sometimes sulphur, depending on where they had been laid. Oil on the water would indicate a mackerel shoal, which you could smell before you could see and later the boat would fill with the slick smells of mackerel being cooked over a gas cooker, which we served with bread butter and a cup of tea.

"In the olden days in Curraun, before farming became a museum piece, the townland would come alive with the smells of freshly scythed grass. It was the mossy smell of not the best of land turning to golden hay under the sunshine, the smell becoming scented with a touch of golden honey from the wild flowers and clovers. On Bonfire Night, June 23rd, the air would fill with the smell of burning timber and furze and sometimes a touch of oil or petrol added to the fire to increase the flames."

For novelist Dermot Bolger, summer meant the smell of Sheila Fitzgerald's caravan in the west. "Amid candles burning she would grill slices of thick batch bread into toast atop her peat-burning stove and anoint them with butter whilst telling me stories that inspired me to write her story in my current novel, The Family on Paradise Pier. When back in Finglas, the lilac trees' sudden explosion of colour was the advent of summer. I would pick huge bunches of them and fill the house with its heavy perfume."

The perfume industry spends millions every year trying to evoke some of the memories recalled here. Thankfully they have yet to succeed in capturing the essence of summer, assuring us and future generations of the need to experience the aromas first hand.