Making Rose Petal Perfume - the Red Rose of Lancaster

I love perfume and this time of year and despite the recent heavy rain, the garden is heady with the scent of roses. We grew them mostly from bare root 'twigs' brought over 20 years ago in a tight bundle strapped to the back of the motorbike and they were chosen as much for their scent as their beauty of shape and colour. These are all old roses, one of them, aka rosa gallica officinalis I chose for this perfume, the oldest known rose in cultivation. They all have fascinating histories ranging from; being found on the tomb of Omar Khayyam to representing the two sides of 15th century Civil War in a fight for the English Throne.

In the mid part of the 20th Century these beautiful, highly perfumed and ancient flowers were nearly lost to cultivation, due in the main to the then fashion for flower arranging and the push to create more colours and repeat flowering blooms .

Old roses, do not do well in vases, their colour palette remains mainly within the red, white, cream, lemon, purple and peach and most of them only flower once a year in May through June and July. It is because of this transience that I wanted a way of keeping their perfume from one rose season to the next. I find it truly uplifting even in the wettest and darkest of Winters.

Why Bother?

Well because there are two things to be worried about in commercial perfumes, one is the chemicals used in their manufacture and the other is that so many of them are tested on animals. Our garden is organic so we know that even at the very start of home perfume making i.e. the growing of the roses, our petals are free from all chemicals and residues of synthetic fertilisers and as we and the chickens eat them, then they are also safe to be placed on the skin.

A further reason is because perfume-making is fun and it has a strange effect on the psyche to sit doing such a pleasant, scented and tactile task as pulling petals from a flower and preparing to make perfume. You get to feel connected to a much simpler and perhaps more human time, turning your kitchen into a Mediaeval still room.

I've seen it written in various places that you can use any roses to make rosewater and perfume but as someone who has been using roses in cooking and also making rosewater for years, I can tell you this is not so.

You should choose the most highly scented roses in your (or someone else's) garden. These are usually the darkest roses; the deep carmine reds and the dark amethyst purples. Here are just a few ideas:

The Apothecary Rose or Red Rose of Lancaster (aka rosa gallica officinalis),

Etoille de Hollande,

Zigeunerknabe (Gypsy Boy)

Roserie de Hay

Rose de Resht - I love the book description of this one, which was introduced in 1880 but then forgotten and rediscovered in 1945 by Miss Nancy Lindsay:-

'Happened on it in an old Persian garden in ancient Resht, tribute to the tea caravans plodding Persia-wards from China, over the Central Asian steppes; it is a sturdy yard high bush of glazed lizard green, perpetually emblazoned with full camellia flowers of pigeon's blood ruby, irised with royal purple, haloed with dragon sepals like the painted blooms on oriental faience .'

Underneath this description is written; 'Cruel sceptics have suggested she found it in a garden in France.'

There are, however, some beautifully highly scented whites, light pinks, creams and lemon yellows but if you also want your perfume to have a gorgeous rose colour, then choose those with the darkest petals and in particular the red and deep pink shades. When you make perfume the petals become white as the colour is removed in the process of steeping, so using the most fragrant and the deepest in colour will give you the classic rose perfume..

I'm still experimenting but most of the old roses above, all images from our garden, would be suitable for perfumes and I've already used many of them in cooking and rosewater.

I was just lucky many years ago to invite a chef to tea and ask her about the best edible petals and she went around the whole garden tasting and breathing in the perfume and advised me that rosa gallica officinalis was the best to use both in cuisine and incidentally, in perfumery. Therefore, with my precious organic vodka at the ready, I'm playing safe and going with the red rose of my mother's home county.

The volume of perfume you can make will depend on the amount of petals you can gather. Essentially, as a basic measurement, once the petals are pushed right down into your jar, you will need to have around an 1" or 2.5cm of vodka above the level of the roses.

In this batch with rosa gallica officinalis (The Red Rose of Lancaster) I was able to gather the following volume:

Rose Petals - I filled a Mason Cash 12" - 30cm bowl (the volume of which is 4.2 quarts - 4 litres loosely with heads of roses and petals - that is a just placed in, they are not pressed down.

1 Bottle Organic Vodka (you won't need it all but there a so many floral liqueurs and perfumes you can make with it).

To give you an idea of how much perfume this could render, once in my jar, the petals and vodka made an initial measurement of half a pint or one third of a litre of perfume.

Equipment

A pair of scissors

A glass jam jar

A potato masher or the plunger from a French press/cafetière

.

Pull the petals from the whole heads of the roses.

Check all petals for insects, just give them a shake.

Place all the petals in the jar and press them down with a fork/potato masher or the plunger from a French Press.

Remember to leave enough room in your jar to allow for 1" or 2.5 cm of liquid to cover the petals.

Pour in the vodka.

Place in a dry dark place.

Shake the jar every day for around 2 - 6 weeks.

Strain through a fine mesh sieve making sure to press all the liquid from the petals.

Put into a dark bottle, preferably with a mister attachment, with a vodka-based perfume this is recommended as it allows the alcohol to evaporate and leave the perfume on the skin. However, you can use a traditional dark perfume bottle, such as used for oil-based perfumes.

The perfume should keep for many, many years. In some recipe books, it is written that it will last 'indefinitely'.

Now you have the scent of heady Summer days to carry you through the coldest and wettest of Winters.

Conclusions

In my film, which I published at the same time - 29th June, you will find that I am now at the two week stage and have already tested it and decided to leave it on the petals for the full 6 weeks. I am also considering adding more petals purely because I have a few blossoms left on the bushes and it seems a shame they should be dashed by the rain when they could be adding to the richness of the perfume.!