What It’s Like Doing a Perfume Making Workshop in Grasse

Grasse is a favorite destination on the French Riviera and, as the perfume capital of France (and maybe even the world), it certainly is a very unique destination to visit in France.

While there are plenty of ways to enjoy Grasse, an experience not to be missed is doing a perfume making workshop with one of the top French perfumeries. I got to do this intoxicating experience on my most recent trip to southern France and it was absolutely delightful.

In this post, I’m sharing everything to know about a perfume making tour, and comparing the different experiences available in Grasse for making your own, custom bottle of perfume.

Which Perfumerie Should You Book a Perfume-Making Tour With?

There are three main perfumeries in Grasse: Fragonard, Molinard, and Galimard. They all offer factory tours, where you can learn about the history of perfume-making in France, processing essences, and the changes to the perfume industry over time.

Also, all three of these perfume houses offer perfume-making workshops. However, not all the workshops are created equal!

Fragonard is probably the most well-known brand, and its factory, museum, and boutique are all located in one building right in the middle of Old Town Grasse. It’s very central and convenient, which means it does see a lot of visitors.

However, if you want to do the full perfume workshop, you will have to go to another location, which is 3 km (1.6 miles) outside of town. It’s also a modern, but more sterile set-up that feels more reminiscent of a doctors office.

All of Galimard’s locations are also well outside of town, over 3 km from the city center.

In contrast, the Molinard factory, boutique, and perfume workshop is just a 10 minute walk (about 0.7 km) from the city center. The historic Molinard building is stunning, and the room where the workshop is held is just gorgeous.

And while Molinard was smaller than the more popular Fragonard, I thought it had a more beautiful and intimate facility. The boutique, tour, and workshop areas were in a historic building, with antique furniture on display as decoration, dramatic black and cream tiled flooring, and a beautiful ceiling.

The workshop at Molinard was in a similarly beautiful room, with the backdrop of the tiled floors and the old machinery. 

So, while I did the free Fragonard factory tour, I chose to do the Molinard Perfume Creation Workshop because of its central location and beautiful rooms, and was extremely happy with it!

What the Molinard Perfume Making Tour is Like

Introduction to Perfume Creation

The Molinard perfume tour is led by an experienced perfume expert. We began with a discussion on the different notes of a perfume: the top notes, the heart notes, and then the base notes.

Each of these notes is a separate layer of the perfume, and lasts for differing amounts of time – the top notes last for just a couple of hours, whereas the base notes can last for up to 12 hours. Each layer is comprised of multiple scents. 

Everyone is seated around small, round tables. In the middle was a turntable with a pyramid of dozens of dark-colored glass jars, each filled with the pure perfume essence. The levels of the pyramid corresponded to the different notes of a perfume.

Exploring the Essences

After the introduction to the anatomy of a perfume came the hands-on time. Our job was to go through all the different scents of each layer, uncap each bottle, smell the cap, and choose our favorites.

When we identified a scent that we liked, there was a strip of paper that we dipped in the scent, and then laid out. We were supposed to choose several options for each layer, so eventually we all had a little collection of scented papers in front of us.

Because the essences were on a turntable, we could easily access and “sample” all of the scents for a particular layer.

There were all sorts of different types of scents, generally falling into musky, floral, or food categories.

In the woody or musky category, you find scents such as sandalwood, leather, grey amber, musk, or even just woody base.

There was a large variety of floral, citrus, and fruity essences, such as tangerine, raspberry, grapefruit, rose, lavender, hyacinth, green tea, and basil, or yuzu.

Finally, the food-related group featured scents like almond, praline, vanilla, or even chocolate. One of the women sitting at my table commented that she felt like she was “just making a cake.” 

It was hard to decide – they all smelled so good! Well, almost all of them. Some of them were pretty strong for me, such as incense or licorice. And there were a couple of scents that were really amusing – like rice! It truly smelled like you had just opened a fresh pot of steamed rice. 

It was fascinating and truly delightful work – parsing through the enticing and elevated scents contained in the glass bottles.

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Choosing Which Scents to Include in Your Perfume

One concern we had while working was whether or not the individual smells we were choosing would all smell good together – but no worries on that account.

The expert guide leading the class takes the time to come around to each person, goes through your strips of paper dipped in the scents, and helps you parse out which ones will work well together.

Sometimes, he said “I think just these two” and sometimes he would fan a combination of paper strips in front of your nose, asking you, “What do you think?” 

I was loving all the light citrus and fruity smells, but I didn’t want to smell like a smoothie, so I had also chosen a few woodier scents and a more musky scent on my base tones.

When we put all the scents together though, it was heavier than I wanted, so the expert removed a few things and tweaked the combination of scent strips until we found something that I liked.

I’d recommend actually doing this yourself as you’re selecting your scents – once the strip has dried, wave each layer (and then the whole thing together) in front of your nose and see how the combination is.

You’ll definitely still want the help of the expert, but it’s nice if you have some idea of what they’re going to all smell like together before he or she comes over.

Mixing Your Perfume

Once I was happy with the combination, the expert wrote the “recipe” on my scent strips – indicating how many ml of each scent I should add to my bottle. 

Then it was time to assemble my perfume! Following the recipe instructions, we grabbed the bottles of each scent and used a dropper to fill up our personal perfume bottle from the bigger bottles we had been sampling from.

This was a really fun part of the perfume-creation experience – watching the entire thing actually take form in front of me. 

When you’re done, you’ll leave with a high-quality, heavy, 50-ml glass bottle of your own unique perfume that you personally selected and created. 

A Few Other Things to Know about Molinard’s Perfume-Making Tour

The experience is marketed as lasting one hour, but I would plan for around 90 minutes, since it takes time for the expert guide to go around and help each person. 

I did this activity as a solo traveler, and I really enjoyed sharing a table with other travelers (including a couple from Singapore and an American living in Spain) and getting to chat with them.

Molinard also keeps a record of your perfume “recipe” – if you ever want to reorder your scent, you can just call and they’ll make up another bottle to send to you.

Now, it needs to be said that none of our bottles of perfume were anything like the elevated fragrances developed by the actual professionals for sale in the boutique, but I loved it just the same. 

Is A Perfume Making Tour in Grasse Worth It?

Absolutely. The setting at Molinard was beautiful, the materials we used were high quality, and the experience was so unique and interesting. 

I don’t even regularly wear perfume – but I loved this experience. When I’m traveling, I’m very happy to participate in just about any new or culturally significant activity, and this one was a delight.

I think this 60-90 minute experience isn’t overly long at all and is easy to work into your Grasse (or larger French Riviera) itinerary, especially since there are multiple workshops held every day.

And while you can do a shorter, less expensive ($30) perfume-making experience at Fragonard, you only have 20 minutes to create an eau de toilette. It’s hardly any time at all and I don’t think that it’s worth it. The 60+ minute class was just fantastic and a much better value for your time and money.

If you like perfume, you’ll love this activity. If you don’t care about perfume but are open to new and interesting experiences, I think you’ll like this too!

Check availability and prices, read reviews, get more details, and reserve your spot for Molinard’s Perfume Workshop Tour here