Softly Gathered: The Scents of Wheat & Barley
Harvest time gives rise to some beautiful – bountiful – notes in perfumery, and this month we pay homage to some of autumn’s fragrant treasures, bottled.
There’s something about the mellow shift into autumn that feels woven into the very air we breathe. Fields once vibrant with green now blaze with gold, the soft rustle of ripened crops signalling the turning of the year. Grain and cereal notes in perfumery speak to this moment with such a scented intimacy.
Wheat can suggest the comforting hush of flour-dusted hands and warm bread, while barley recalls sheaves gathered beneath amber skies. Through these tactile, nostalgia-infused accords, fragrance has the ability to capture the textures of harvest, steeped in golden light and the gentle abundance of the season. Let’s embrace them…
Jorum Healing Berry
Inspired by the Valley of Strathmore, we’re greeted with a cornucopia of berry notes, bringing to mind the last blackberries, brambles now bejewelled by dewdrops glittering on spiderwebs. Dark purple/black sloes bring extra piquancy, as spices are crushed into tannin-sweet juices of tayberries and loganberries – a complex tapestry of aromas, weaving together the herbaceous notes of artemisia and wild mint with the woodsy delicacy of violet leaf. As it settles, the earthy warmth of raspberry leaf and orris butter emerge, with the entire composition grounded by a unique cereal accord. Picture golden autumnal sunshine illuminating stores of wheat, corn, barley and rye. Dry, toasty, slightly roasted, endlessly comforting.
£89 for 30ml extrait de parfum jorumstudio.com
Kingdom Scotland Metamorphic
Dark geology underpins this fragrance, echoing the ancient metamorphic stone that shapes Scotland’s rugged land. Black pepper sparks against the smoke of tobacco, before yielding to a mineralic heart threaded with incense, and the deep red shadow of dried rose petals. Yet it is the Islay malt that defines this scent: malted barley steeped in sea‑spray air, touched with peat smoke, iodine and a subtle citrus shimmer, mellowed by vanilla sweetness. As it settles, amber resin and leather glow like embers, rich and smouldering.
£140 for 50ml eau de parfum in our shop
ZADIG & VOLTAIRE This is Her! Burning Love
Suitably blazing with the creamy warmth of pistachio liquor, we simmer into a heart of chestnut, vanilla and sandalwood: the nuttiness smooth, roasted, and ridiculously addictive. What really sets this apart is the wheat bran absolute, which brings an intriguingly toasty edge, the finish smoky and lingering. Daring and seductive, yet comforting and fun, this scent captures contrasts: a golden hour drink on a Parisian rooftop bar at sunset; a leather-jacket-ed moped ride past fields of freshly threshed wheat. It’s an Old Master print of bucolic scenery overlayed with mischievously modern graffiti.
£110 for 100ml eau de parfum theperfumeshop.com
Jo Malone London Poppy & Barley
Crimson poppies ripple through England’s fields, their satin petals a flash of red against tawny autumn grasses. Blackcurrants spill their juicy tang, softened by the powdery brush of rose and violet, drifting as petals on the breeze. Harvest comes alive here: sheaves of golden barley tied with rough twine, barley bran scattering to welcoming earthiness beneath warm hands. Blossoms and grain entwine, the scent deeply textured with toasty husks, sun‑warmed straw and the tender, lightly gilded hush of autumn’s abundance.
£122 for 100ml Cologne johnlewis.com
L’Artisan Parfumeur Bois Farine
Soft as chaff drifting from the threshing floor, Bois Farine wraps us in the tender hush of early autumn. Wheat is the thread running through, evoking flour-dusted hands and the nutty warmth of freshly ground grain. Iris lends its powdery sheen, a silken light across woods of cedar, gaiac and sandalwood, pared back in Ellena’s unmistakable restraint. Gentle and cocooning, this is harvest made perfume: golden fields distilled into a quietly resonant comfort, intimate as bread broken at dawn, mellow light stroking floury fingerprints on a timeworn wooden table.
Currently £112 for 100ml eau de toilette lartisanparfumeur.com
Written by Suzy Nightingale