Every rain brings a smell with it. In the city it smells of wet asphalt, in the village - road dust and black, oily earth. At sea - with shellfish and strong brine. Summer showers in the steppes near Saratov, where I spent my childhood, knock out the dry bitterness of feather grass and wormwood from the grass stand. In India, seasonal rains, like the wet hands of a potter, give shape to everything: childhood memories, film plots, cuisine, economics. But the most violent thunderstorms plague the southwest coast of Australia - last year, an outbreak of so-called "thunderstorm asthma" killed six Melbourne residents. An attack can be triggered by heavy rain combined with a powerful wind: wet pollen is destroyed, and small particles do not settle in the nose, but go straight to the lungs. But those Melbourne who do not suffer from asthma describe the smells of their city, which fell under the "shower",in the most lyrical terms: "the scent of a greenhouse in a botanical garden", "real freshness", "smells like when my puppy digs the ground in the backyard" (quotes from the perfume forum Basenotes). And here's a coincidence: it was the Australians who were the first - half a century ago - to determine what the rain has smells and why we like them so much.
In the 1950s and 1960s, a pair of Australian mineralogists, Isabelle Bear and Richard Thomas, investigated the scent of rain and eventually found its source - organic matter in the atmosphere, primarily terpenes. These are fragrant substances of plant origin contained in essential oils: the biting freshness of a pine tree, a chill of mint, a spicy ginger bite - all terpenes. Porous rocks and clay absorb them and other molecules from the air like sponges. When rain approaches, the moisture that precedes it draws these odors out of the soil, lifts them up and scatters them into the wind. The longer the drought, the more aromatic substances accumulate in the earth and the more fragrant the long-awaited rain.
Bear and Thomas not only declassified the smell of rain. They, as is often the case in a scientific environment, came up with a romantic name for it, which eventually took hold. In an article for the journal Naturereleased in 1964, mineralogists called this fragrance "petrihor" (from the Greek petra, "stone", and ikhor - "blood of the gods"). Immortal blood of stone! Even more spectacular than the "wind rose" or "dew point". True, the authors of the article admitted that the pure petrichor had already been obtained before - hundreds of years ago, thousands of kilometers from Australian laboratories. The first to draw his soul out of the rain were Indian perfumers in the city of Kannauj on the banks of the Ganges, Uttar Pradesh. From generation to generation they have been producing "mitti attar" by distillation, but the raw materials are not jasmine, not roses or champaca, but discs of burnt clay, which give their scent to sandalwood oil in six to seven hours. It is the pure smell of anticipation: a day in the oven hardening the clay, four endless months of hot, dusty summer in northern India - until the monsoon comes in Julyforty years is the age of maturation of sandalwood. There is no person who would not like petrihor: we inherited this love from our ancestors. For them, the rain meant more than sitting on the windowsill with a cup of coffee - survival.
Another substance responsible for the smell of rain is geosmin. It is produced by some microorganisms living in the soil, mainly bacteria and blue-green algae. If petrihor smells of damp freshness, then geosmin is loose, just dug earth (And a little beetroot. More precisely, on the contrary: beets smell like geosmin). We are very sensitive to this smell and are able to recognize it in the smallest concentration. What makes us in common with camels, which smell an oasis several kilometers away, according to some scientists, thanks to geosmin - read, living, fertile land. We have acquired susceptibility to petrihor and geosmin as a result of evolution: once we all had to look for water. And now, thousands of years later, we continue our search, adjusted for the time: today we need spirits that reproduce this water pouring from the sky.
The best fragrances with the smell of rain
Angéliques Sous La Pluie, Frédéric Malle
Angéliques are not some Angelics who decided to wander romantically in the rain, but the flowers of an angelica, or angelica. In Siberia, where angelica has taken root better than anywhere else, beekeepers respect it very much: angelica honey turns out good, and a lot. Angéliques Sous La Pluie, on the other hand, is bitter, caustic and cool, like the driest gin with ice - or rain in the Siberian taiga.
Voleur de Roses, L'Artisan Parfumeur
Roses nailed to the ground by rain: moist warmth and grassy camphor rises from the roots. The wind blew ripe plums from the branches - another hour or two, and they will ferment.
Dirt, Demeter
"Dirt" is perhaps the most geosminic scent of all existing: a real mother of cheese earth, a cellar and spring earthworms in one bottle.
Un Matin d'Orage, Annick Goutal
“Thunderous Morning” is a garden heavily battered by rain: magnolias are drying in the sun, wet mint is in full swing, gardenias that have flown around are mourning their negligee.>