Casa de perfumes
La Geria, Lanzarote 28.97° N 13.71° W
Malpaís, perfumes from the badlands of Lanzarote
Malpaís is what the islanders call land the volcano ruined. Nothing should grow here. We make perfume from what did.
1 September 1730
The ground opened.
Near Timanfaya the earth split and kept burning for six years. When it stopped, nearly a quarter of Lanzarote lay under ash and the villages on it were gone.
The bottle starts empty, like the island did.
Stratum I
Then the ash turned out to drink.
The farmers noticed the black gravel stayed damp underneath. Picón pulls water out of the night air and hands it to whatever grows below it, so they farmed the ash instead of fleeing it.
Stratum II
One vine. One hole. One wall.
They dug down through the ash to the old soil, planted a single vine at the bottom of each crater and piled a half moon of stones on the windward side. Thousands of them, by hand, still there.
Our mark is one of those walls seen from above. The dot is the vine.
Stratum III
The wind that built the walls.
The trade wind comes off the Atlantic from the north east on most days of the year. It carries salt and the white sand of Famara, and every wall on the island is built against it.
Reading the wind at La Geria. The liquid in the bottle leans the way it blows.
Stratum IV
Our only colour.
On the prickly pears at Guatiza lives a small grey insect. Crush it and your fingers turn crimson. For two centuries it dyed the robes of cardinals. It is the red dot in our mark, and the only colour we allow ourselves.
Stratum V
The sea, left in the sun.
At the south end of the island the Atlantic is let into square pools and left alone until only the salt is still there. It is the last thing the island gives, so it goes in last.
No. 0, the signature
Five layers of one island, shaken once.
Ash, vine, wind, red, salt, poured in the order the island made them. Then we let them settle into one and put the stone back on.
