The Smell of Rain Is Baked in Summer: Mitti Attar of Kannauj

Over a low fire of wood or cow dung sits a copper pot full of broken clay cups drowned in water, its lid sealed shut with mud. From the lid a hollow bamboo pipe runs to a second copper vessel, long in the neck and round in the belly, standing in a trough of water with sandalwood oil waiting inside. Damp cloths cool the hot copper. The air is pale with summer dust, and slowly the yard fills with the smell of a rain that has not yet come.

What gathers in that oil is mitti attar, also called itr-e-khaki, and it is a speciality of Kannauj, a town in Uttar Pradesh that has made attar for more than 400 years. It is weather caught with fire and copper: the smell of first rain on parched ground, condensed into oil. Only about one in ten of the town's attar perfumeries makes it, by the count of the government's Fragrance and Flavour Development Centre, and they make their rain in the hot months before the monsoon.

Made before the rains

Of all the seasons in which to make the smell of rain, the rainy one is the worst. The clay is baked topsoil, and in the monsoon the damp can get into it and rob it of its smell. Shakti Vinay Shukla, when he directed that same government centre, gave the rule from the dry side: the more the clay bakes in summer, the better.

Into the copper, out through the bamboo

The pot in the yard is the deg, the long-necked vessel is the bhapka, and the method is named for the pair: deg-bhapka. Some makers use unglazed topsoil fired in a kiln, often bought from local potters, and crush it before it goes in. Pranav Kapoor of Indian Naturals, an eighth-generation perfumer, says the mud once came from the banks of the Ganges; his artisans now use broken clay pots and kulhads, small clay cups, and the distilling itself is unchanged. The shards go in where another attar would take vetiver roots or petals. As the vapour cools in the bhapka, the sandalwood oil in it takes up the smell and holds it, so the oil has done its work long before anyone wears it.

Gaurav Mehrotra is the third generation at Puja Perfumery, and his family still makes mitti in a workshop behind his house. A batch starts with 20 kg of clay and 40 kg of water; the first distillate goes into an empty copper pot and is distilled again, the attar is taken from that second run, and the stills are fed fresh clay for two to three months. The finished oil goes into pouches of camel leather, which drink the water out of it and leave the perfume stronger.

A word for potter's earth

On 7 March 1964 two scientists at CSIRO in Melbourne, Isabel Joy Bear and Richard Thomas, published a paper in Nature called "Nature of Argillaceous Odour": the smell of clay, in a word that goes back through Latin to the Greek for potter's earth.

The paper opened on an old observation: many dry clays and soils give off a peculiar odour when breathed on or moistened. The odour came with the first rains after drought, and there was some evidence that drought-stricken cattle grew restless at this "smell of rain". Bear and Thomas steam-distilled rocks that had sat out in warm, dry conditions and found a yellowish oil, trapped in rock and soil and released by moisture. They named it petrichor, from the Greek petra, stone, and ichor, the ethereal blood of the gods.

When CSIRO later told the story of its own word, it gave India the earlier claim: before the paper, a small perfumery industry there had already caught the smell in sandalwood oil and called it matti ka attar, earth perfume.

When the sandalwood ran short

In the late 1990s the Indian government restricted the sale of sandalwood, and the price of attar shot up. In 2008 Abdul Malik, of Kannauj's largest exporter, Mohammad Ayub Mohammad Yaqub Perfumers, told Business Today that most manufacturers, his own firm included, had swapped the sandalwood oil base for liquid paraffin or a synthetic. By his figures the input cost ran about nine to one, kilo for kilo, sandalwood against paraffin. About six years earlier, four attars in five had been made on sandalwood; by 2008, nine in ten were made on something else.

Sandalwood and paraffin are both still in the copper. The receiver at the mitti unit in The National's report held liquid paraffin, and a small bottle of Kannauj mitti could vary twenty-five-fold in price depending on which oil caught the rain.

Al Majmua is an Areej Le Doré eau de parfum, a modern chypre built on one of the most famous and challenging Indian attars. Its heart is a traditional majmua distilled on Indian sandalwood, carrying green ruh khus (vetiver), patchouli, kadam and pandanus flowers. What it shares with mitti is the method, the vapour of roots, leaves and flowers condensed into sandalwood oil; mitti itself is not on its list.

Bergamot and blackcurrant open it brightly, then comes the green, narcotic breath of kewda, the pandanus flower, while patchouli and kadam turn it damp and forested. Oakmoss and dry cedar settle the base under an iris accord.

Fired clay on a modern note list

In the last five to ten years, Mehrotra says, mitti's popularity has multiplied, with demand from the US, Britain, Europe and Japan.

Lost Tribe works only in natural materials, and ASH v3 is built on smoke, a surreal smell of burning wood. Black pepper and jack pine open it over bergamot, then comes a heart of Siam wood, cedar, Yakusugi and Nootka, the last like a freshly sharpened pencil, with lavender among them. There are virtually no florals, and a tincture of bakhoor from Sultan Qaboos lifts the whole blend and adds a freshness to it.

Vetiver and frankincense come through in the drydown to complete the forest fire. Low in the base, with Merauke oud and Indonesian sandalwood, lies mitti attar, an oil drawn from clay that has already been through a fire of its own.

Devil's Garden is the second perfume Folkwinds has made with Dr. Rajesh Balkrishnan, who directed it and gathered its materials from the glaciated Himalayas and North America's most barren deserts for Jono Bornstein to build into accords. It is a perfume of place, meant to feel like a long trek to a far-off base camp or a months-long drive through desert, scorching and freezing at once.

Its notes run in three lines, and mitti sits in the middle one with timur, patchouli and tuberose, between citron, rose and artemisia above and amyris, white ambergris, sandalwood absolute, agarwood, nagarmotha and copal below.

Fresh shards, sealed with mud

In Kannauj the copper is kept cool under damp cloths. Spent clay comes out, fresh shards go in, the lid is sealed again with mud, and every few hours a receiver heavy with oil that smells of rain is lifted from its trough into the dust of a dry yard.

Frequently asked questions

What is mitti attar?

An oil-based perfume from Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh that captures petrichor, the smell of first rain on dry soil. Baked clay is distilled and its vapour caught in oil, traditionally sandalwood. It is also called itr-e-khaki.

How is mitti attar made?

Baked clay, from kiln-fired topsoil to broken pots and small clay cups called kulhads, is covered with water in a copper deg sealed with mud or clay and heated over a wood, cow-dung or coal fire. A bamboo pipe carries the vapour to a copper receiver of oil standing in water, where it condenses and is fixed. Some makers distil it a second time, and one Kannauj family keeps a run going for two to three months.

Why is the monsoon the wrong time to make mitti attar?

The clay is baked topsoil, and in the rainy season the damp can rob it of its smell, so the monsoon is the worst time to make it. Shakti Vinay Shukla, when he directed the Fragrance and Flavour Development Centre in Kannauj, held that the more the clay bakes in summer, the better.

Which niche perfumes contain mitti attar?

Lost Tribe ASH v3, an all-natural perfume of smoke and woods, lists mitti attar in its base. Folkwinds Devil's Garden, made with Dr. Rajesh Balkrishnan, lists mitti among its materials. Areej Le Doré Al Majmua is built on a different Indian attar, majmua, distilled on Indian sandalwood.