French-trained perfumer Nicole Thomas on her Scotsburn farm
A trip to France tracing family history gave Nicole Thomas a whiff of her life’s passion.
FROM her perfume studio, Nicole Thomas looks out across her experimental scent garden, to her 10ha Scotsburn farm, which is surrounded by silver wattle trees.
“I love telling my French perfume contacts that wattle grows wild on the farm,” Nicole says.
“We take the tree for granted in Australia, but in France they call it mimosa and think it’s the most beautiful botanical perfume material. They go crazy for it and it costs a fortune.”
As seductive as the wattle trees are, it is Nicole’s perfume studio that holds all the allure.
It’s in this space — her laboratory — that the French-trained botanical perfumer masterminds a concoction of all-natural products for her business, Essensorie, established in 2008.
The fragrance of the laboratory alone “engulfs the senses” and tells a tale that spans the globe.
Nicole sources hundreds of essential oils and absolutes (concentrated, highly aromatic, botanical oils) created from flowers, herbs, leaves, woods, resins and spices, including English lavender from Tasmania, ti-tree, eucalyptus and other native plants from interstate, through to cedar from Canada, frankincense from Africa and Italian bergamot.
Using her training and intuitive olfactory skill, and with staff assistance, she blends these ingredients into about 120 different products in two lines: body and home. Aside from essence blends, she makes body oils and hand creams, as well as home perfumes, candles and her best-selling pillow perfume, all sold in glass or environmentally sustainable packaging.
The products are largely sold through her shop in Melbourne’s Block Arcade, run by her son Lachlan, as well as online (with internet sales skyrocketing during the coronavirus lockdown).
Nicole grew up on the Mornington Peninsula, the daughter of a nurseryman, and has been a lifelong green thumb herself, and one day she aspires to distil some of her own oils.
“I’m growing tuberoses in my experimental garden because I buy a tiny 5g bottle of its precious absolute for about $400,” she says, adding that she owns distillation equipment but is yet to use it commercially.
“I dream of distilling my own oils, but I would never be able to grow enough tuberoses, for example, to make it commercial. You need vast quantities of plant material to make the tiniest amount of oil.”
She says since moving to Scotsburn, just outside Ballarat, four years ago, she’s been experimenting with what plants successfully grow in the region, with lavender difficult because of the clay soil.
“One that is growing successfully is lemon verbena, which is a herb and is easy to distil. If I was able to grow enough I could distil the essence myself.
“I’m foremost a perfumer, a blender. Distilling is a specialised skill and very complicated, extracting aromatic molecules without destroying them. It would be impossible for me to grow and distil all the oils for my products.
“One day, though, I’d love to open this garden to the public, offering different aromatic rooms, like mint or citrus, for people to explore with their noses.”
Nicole was working in graphic design and marketing when she was watching the Tour de France on TV in 2007 and “a shiver went up my spine”.
“I wrote down the name of the town the riders were going through and began to do a bit of research.”
That saw her unravel her French ancestry, dating back to 1200, including noble lineage, which then led to a trip to France tracking her ancestors and the family castle.
“While I was there I visited a lavender distillery. I picked up a bottle of essential oil — I still have that bottle — and the scent blew my mind away. It was a light bulb moment.
“It spoke to me somehow, in my soul. I can’t explain it. It was just a combination of comfort, history and beauty.”
Since 2007 Nicole has returned to France annually, initially for a series of courses, including aromatherapy, botanical perfumery and mainstream perfumery (“there is a massive difference — one uses synthetic materials, the other botanical essences”).
“It’s like a chef, you can learn the theory of fragrance, the top note, base and heart notes, but I believe I have a fundamental instinct for scent, the nose of a hound, a natural affinity.”
She says the past decade has been one of learning and discovering, from travelling the world to meet her suppliers, to refining the art and science of making natural perfumes.
Nicole says her business has now grown to the point where she can’t keep up with demand and she is looking at ways to mechanise processes, including blending, labelling and filling.
“I get a lot of interest from around the world from parties wanting a stake in my brand, but I’m protective of what I do. I don’t want Essensorie to grow so big that I’m only focused on managing people and logistics.
“I don’t want to be taken away from what I love doing. Sometimes I get very little sleep because — even though they’re intangible — I’m constantly thinking about creating more fragrances.”
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