Madness Of Blackcurrant — leaf before berry

Sep 1

2 min read

Updated: Sep 2

Olfactorium

In the porch stood a bowl, still cold from the well. She had not brought berries. Three leaves, with stems. Her husband saw them and asked nothing: the house had known this gesture for years. Tea from blackcurrant leaf did not heal and did not mark a feast. It began a quiet day.

She cut so the bush would not look stripped. Not sentiment. Habit. The leaf darkened at once in the boiling water. It smelled of earth and green, not of the kitchen.

The child sat over a book he was not reading. He took the cup, winced, finished it. Asked if there would be jam. She shook her head. Not today. Berries on this bush ripen in their own time, and the house did not know how to hurry them.

By evening a sweetness remained in the cup that had not been there at the start. As if the berry had caught up with the leaf after they had stopped waiting.

The niche fragrance Madness Of Blackcurrant Edgardio Chilini keeps that order — and breaks it. The bush will not agree to be one thing. First the roughness of the leaf. Then the tartness of the skin. The berry does not arrive as a dessert on order. That is the madness: blackcurrant in all its lives at once.

He grew up and looked for that smell in other rooms. They offered him sweet and called it currant. He recognized jam and left. Until he met this fragrance. Then there was no need to explain which leaf was meant.

It has no wish to please a table. There is a bush they are in no hurry to make into a dish.

How it smells

A crushed leaf: green, with that wild edge without which blackcurrant is not itself. The bud still closed. Then the skin — the berry bitten, not cooked. Sweetness comes late and sits on the skin. Toward the end the green recedes; a thin berry aftertaste remains.