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The Last Flowers of Grasse
How an 86-year-old flower farmer in the South of France became the sole guardian of Chanel No. 5’s most essential ingredient
The jasmine scent arrives before anything else—sweet and green, hanging thick in the September air like something you could touch. Joseph Mul moves slowly through the rows, his walking stick tapping a rhythm against the dry earth of his 75-acre estate outside Pégomas, a commune perched in the hills above Cannes. At 86, he has the unhurried gait of a man who knows every inch of this land, who has watched seasons turn here for eight decades, who can read weather and soil and the mood of a flower the way some men read newspapers.
“I was born into this world of perfume,” he tells me, settling into the shade of a plane tree near the property’s bastide, an elegant stone house that has sheltered Muls since the mid-1800s. He speaks in French; an interpreter translates. His navy shirt is soaked through with sweat, as is mine. He doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes drift occasionally to the fields beyond us, where 70 seasonal workers—most in football jerseys and wide-brimmed caps—move like a slow river through the jasmine bushes, their hands working with the mechanical efficiency of people paid by the pound.
We are watching the harvest of one of the rarest crops in modern perfumery: Jasminum grandiflorum, the Grasse jasmine, which grows nowhere else quite like it grows here, in these hills of the French Riviera. This is the sixth generation of Muls to farm this land, a continuity that would be merely charming if it weren’t also the only thing standing between Chanel and the extinction of its most iconic fragrance in its purest form.
The town of Grasse has held the title of the world’s perfume capital since the Middle Ages, when its leather tanners discovered they needed flowers—lots of them—to mask the smell of curing hides. By the 18th century, the tanners were gone, but the flowers remained, and Grasse became synonymous with an industry that was equal parts chemistry, agriculture and theater. The hills here offer ideal conditions: altitude, microclimate, fertile soil shielded from harsh coastal winds. Jasmine, roses, tuberose—they all thrived.
But by the time Joseph and his brother inherited the family business in 1968, the industry was collapsing. Cheaper flowers flooded in from Egypt, India, North Africa. Synthetic compounds, invented in laboratories, could approximate the scent of jasmine for a fraction of the cost. Young farmers sold their land to developers building vacation villas. The fields emptied out.
“From the 1960s, there was a major shift,” Mul says, his cap shading his face. “Production of flowers in the region reduced.” He understood the economics with brutal clarity. “We can’t compete on price with countries that have different labor rules. Some products can be purchased for hundreds of times less than we charge. But it’s not the same quality.”
It was, he knew, adapt or disappear.
What saved the Mul farm was Chanel’s problem, which was also an existential one. In 1921, Ernest Beaux had created Chanel No. 5 for Coco Chanel herself—a revolutionary perfume with more than 80 ingredients, anchored by the jasmine of Grasse. For decades, it remained the house’s signature scent, its calling card, its olfactory DNA. But by the 1980s, Chanel was running out of the one ingredient that couldn’t be faked or substituted: the jasmine that smelled like that jasmine, grown in this soil, under this sun.
Mul makes the comparison to wine. “Each flower has its own unique qualities, like grapes. You can’t replace Burgundy with Rioja. You can’t replace Grasse jasmine with another jasmine. The user will detect the difference.”
I am skeptical of this. Surely most people—civilians, non-experts—couldn’t tell Egyptian jasmine from French jasmine. Surely this is marketing mystique. But later, in the estate’s small laboratory, I am handed paper strips dipped in oils from different regions. The Grasse jasmine smells green, almost vegetal, with notes that remind me of fresh tea leaves. The Egyptian jasmine is fruitier, darker, with an amber undertone like jam left too long in the sun. The difference isn’t subtle. It’s the difference between off-white paint samples that look identical in the can but wildly divergent on the wall.
In 1987, Chanel’s CEO and its perfumer-in-chief, Jacques Polge, came to the Mul estate with a proposal. They needed a guaranteed supply of roses and jasmine to preserve the original formulation of No. 5 L’Extrait—the most expensive, most rarefied version of the perfume, sold only in Chanel boutiques. They proposed a partnership.
“Everyone has to win,” Mul says, with the faint smile of a man who has negotiated well. “We’re very direct: here’s what we’ve grown, here’s what it costs. In return, they ensure we can make a living.”
Eventually, the Muls built their own processing facility. The arrangement became exclusive. Today, the Mul farm supplies Chanel and Chanel alone—a monopoly and a lifeline, bound together in mutual dependence. As Olivier Polge, the current Chanel perfumer (and son of Jacques), puts it plainly: “If we didn’t invest, this farm wouldn’t exist. Without this farm, No. 5 couldn’t exist either.”
One thousand jasmine flowers are required to produce a single 30-milliliter bottle of L’Extrait.
The harvest begins at dawn and ends at 1 p.m., when the sun becomes punishing. From August through October, the jasmine must be picked daily—the flowers bloom overnight, are gathered in the morning, then bloom again by the next day. Speed is essential. “Jasmine is extremely delicate,” Mul explains. “They don’t like being carried. The faster they’re picked and treated, the higher the quality.”
The pickers work in silence, their hands moving in a practiced rhythm. Each deposits their haul into woven baskets, which will be weighed when the day ends. The fastest pickers can collect nearly eight pounds. A small squadron of Chanel public-relations representatives watches carefully, ensuring no one photographs faces. This is, after all, a carefully managed story.
Mul leads me to a jasmine bush, perhaps three feet tall, heaving with white blossoms. He gestures with his walking stick. “The flower sits in a calyx,” he says. “You take it with a hand on each side. Once you’ve done a few, you’ll feel how fragile they are.” I try. The bloom falls cleanly into my palm, light as paper, already beginning to wilt in the heat.
Later, standing in the relative cool of the bastide’s courtyard, I think about what this place represents. It is, on one level, a working farm—mechanized irrigation, molecular testing, organic regenerative methods replacing the old chemicals. But it is also a carefully curated heritage site, a living advertisement for Chanel’s commitment to artisanal tradition, to the romance of the French countryside, to the idea that luxury is rooted in something ancient and irreplaceable.
Every year, influencers descend on the estate to photograph themselves among the flowers. Journalists are invited to tour the fields and write admiring profiles. The Mul family’s six-generation story is told and retold, a narrative as carefully tended as the jasmine itself.
But beneath the performance lies something simpler and more pragmatic: a deal. Chanel needs these flowers. The Muls need Chanel. The romance is real, but so is the contract.
Joseph Mul adjusts his cap and gazes out at the fields, where the pickers are finishing for the day. His granddaughter Marika, the sixth generation, works somewhere among them. His daughters are involved. His son-in-law runs daily operations. “It’s continuity,” he says. “Everyone contributes and brings the new, while respecting what came before. It’s as things should be.”
In the distance, metal crates filled with jasmine are being loaded onto trucks, bound for the processing facility down the road, where the flowers will be transformed into the essence that will eventually become, in some small measure, the most famous perfume in the world. The whole operation is invisible to the person who sprays No. 5 on their wrist in a department store. They smell only the final product, the marketing, the dream.
But here, in these hills, is where that dream begins: with dirt, heat, sweat and a very old man who knows that some things—the good things—cannot be replaced.