It is already a few years old, the SWR documentary with the promising title "The Scent Hunter" from the series Countries, people, adventures. Nevertheless, it is definitely worth seeing.
Rolf Lambert and Bern Girrbach follow in the footsteps of Laurent Severac, who, to put it loosely, works as a sniffer dog for the fragrance industry. The Frenchman discovered his passion for scents as a child while looking for truffles with his father and moved to Asia at the age of thirty, where he made his passion his profession. Severac operates a company in Vietnam that produces flavorings for the cosmetics and perfume industries. In addition, however, he is always drawn to the wild expanses of local vegetation on behalf of large flavoring manufacturers - in search of unknown and unused plant raw materials.
With the boom in the beauty industry, especially the niche segment as well Demand for natural ingredients, the need for new fragrances is growing steadily. In addition, the flavoring industry has an almost infinite portfolio of synthetic ingredients that is constantly being expanded (by fragrance chemists who develop captives for the companies), but the range of natural essences is relatively manageable.
Lambert and Girrbach accompany Severac into the jungle of North Vietnam, where he discovers Mak Truk, the seed pods of a wild ginger bush, watching him distill a special kind of lemon balm, which he became aware of in the herb garden of a Laotian temple sauna. They join Severac and his expedition into the Laos mountain forest with the aim of finding olfactory gold - Oud, the resin of the agarwood. And finally watch the scent hunter as he presents his discoveries to his customers in Grasse, France.
The scent hunter - an exciting documentary for real perfume lovers!
You can watch them here:
PART 1 (15 min)
PART 2 (15 min)
PART 3 (13 min)
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