The Beginning

It seems like my life is made up of a succession of monomanias. For many years it was chemistry, then cooking, then photography. In two earlier posts I talk about ambergris and musk and their relationship to food. This has led to the current monomania, perfumery. The...

A Berkeley Weekend with Mandy Aftel III

On day two, things got even more exciting. Mandy introduced a system I had never seen before and that completely blew my mind. She works by adding drops of fully-concentrated absolutes or essential oils to five milliliters of ethanol. She starts out with only two...