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5 2 | t h e c l e v e r r o o t "The scale of production for natural essences in very limit- ed," confides Aftel, who notes the rarity of ginger from Jakarta and a preferred rose from Istanbul. "Sources will often dry up and because they're vintage-specific, like wine, I'm constantly monitoring them for quality." A highly-trained nose is greedy and Aftel is no exception; her appetite for aroma seems insatiable. She evaluates the quality of a scent with a level of alacrity and discrimination that indicates she has little patience for anything that is less than exquisite. While she buys only the best examples of natu- ral fragrance, she works entirely subjectively. Her talent and the success that has ensued afford her the luxury of only creating products that satisfy her personally and are, in turn, adored by her devoted clientele. "There's a thrill to working with these materials; I can offer something that is very specific to me and I never have to sacrifice quality," she said. Year after year her customers return their coveted an- tique boxes to her studio to be refilled with the solid fragrance of their choosing. "When you step into an elevator and you can smell the fragrance of the person who was there before you, you're smelling a synthetic aroma. Natural perfume stays closer to the body. It only stays on the skin for a few hours and never lingers very long in the air," said Aftel when explaining how to immediately recognize the differences between synthetic and natural fragrances. Sitting knee to knee so it's easier to pass the vials, we begin nosing through dozens of essences. Many are familiar, like jas- mine and rose, and others, like oak moss, are confined almost exclusively to the perfumers' realm. Some are primary and youthful while others are century- old antiques prized by Aftel for their fully-developed often tertiary char- acteristics. Aftel is far less concerned with the process used to achieve a particular essence than she is with the quality of the end result, but it's clear that she's not bound by tradition. Within the last five years she began selecting ex- tracts achieved using the process of supercritical fluid extraction ( SFE-CO 2 and referred to as su- percritical CO 2 ) for their purity. Not surprising given that supercritical CO 2 extraction is a more natural process in that it uses pressurized, ambient-tem- perature carbon dioxide for extraction in lieu of heat and chemical solvents that 5 2 | t h e c l e v e r r o o t