The Notes
Heather
Heather is the low shrub that turns the northern moors purple in late summer, and its scent is honeyed, dry and faintly medicinal, like the honey made from it.
Heather is a small evergreen shrub of the moors, and it smells honeyed, dry and a little medicinal: warm nectar and dust on a hillside in late August. Most of what Britain calls heather is ling, Calluna vulgaris, though its cousins in the genus Erica often grow alongside it.
Where it grows
Ling is the only species in its genus, a member of the heath family, Ericaceae. It likes thin, acid, hungry soil, so it covers heath, moorland, mountain slopes and the drier parts of bogs, often over peat. It is the dominant plant of much of the heathland of Britain and Ireland and ranges across Europe from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. In the Scottish Highlands it is more or less the moor itself, and in England it spreads across uplands such as the North York Moors.
Its usual companions are bell heather, Erica cinerea, and cross-leaved heath, Erica tetralix. The names are not settled: in some places ling is the heather and bell heather is not, and elsewhere the reverse. Ling flowers from about July into September and is generally at its best in late August, when whole hillsides go purple for a few weeks. It was once put to work in Scotland as thatch and fuel, and to dye wool yellow.
What it smells like
Close to, the flowers give a thin, honeyed sweetness over something green and herbal, with a slightly bitter, medicinal edge. It is an airy smell rather than a heady one, more a whole hillside than a single bloom.
The honey tells the same story more loudly. Scottish beekeepers carry their hives up to the moors in late summer, and ling honey comes back dark, strong and warm, with a bitter finish and the recognisable scent of the flower. It is also unusual to handle: it sets like a jelly in the jar and only loosens when it is stirred, which makes it awkward to get out of the comb.
How perfumers use it
A heather absolute does exist, made by solvent extraction of the flowering tops, but it yields very little, costs a great deal and is hard to find, so few perfumers work with it. Most heather notes are accords instead: honeyed materials, green notes and soft florals arranged to suggest the moor. Heather usually sits in the heart of a fragrance. It turns up in whisky as well: peat cut from heather-rich ground, as on Orkney, is said to give a softer, more heathery smoke.
In our fragrances
Highland is a walk across the moor at the end of the season. It opens cold and resinous with juniper berry, Scots pine and black pepper; wild heather sits at the heart with smoky lapsang souchong tea, deepened by labdanum; then peat smoke, guaiac wood and damp moss settle beneath it. To try it beside the other five, the Discovery Set holds all six.