In the hills above the Mediterranean, generations of one farming family have preserved the jasmine and roses that help give the world-famous perfume its distinctive character.

Long before Chanel No. 5 reaches a perfume counter in Paris, London or New York, part of its story begins in a field in southern France.

In the hills around Grasse, historically regarded as the heart of French perfumery, the Mul family has cultivated flowers for generations. Their jasmine fields have become particularly important to Chanel, whose most famous fragrance still depends on flowers grown in the region more than a century after its creation.

The relationship is unusually close for a global luxury brand.

The Mul family has farmed in the area since the 1800s and has now worked the land for six generations. In 1987, Chanel established a direct partnership with the family to secure a long-term supply of jasmine and other flowers grown specifically for the house. The arrangement helped protect both the raw materials Chanel considered essential and a form of agricultural expertise that was increasingly under pressure from development and lower-cost production abroad.

For Chanel, geography matters.

The jasmine grown around Grasse is prized not simply because of the species of flower, but because of the particular soil, climate and cultivation methods of the region — the perfume equivalent of what winemakers call terroir.

Joseph Mul has compared that distinction to wine: a grape grown in one region cannot automatically reproduce the character of another. Chanel’s perfumers make a similar argument about the jasmine cultivated for No. 5.

The flower grown in Grasse has a fresh, nuanced character with fruity and green-tea facets that Chanel considers integral to the fragrance’s identity. Master perfumer Olivier Polge has said that preserving the way the jasmine is grown, harvested and extracted helps maintain continuity with the material used when the perfume was originally created.

That continuity requires extraordinary amounts of manual work.

Jasmine flowers open during the night and are harvested early in the morning, when their aroma is at its strongest. Each blossom is picked by hand because the petals are too fragile for mechanized harvesting.

Workers move through the fields with baskets as the sun rises, collecting the tiny white flowers before the heat of the day begins to alter them. The harvested jasmine must then be transported quickly for processing because even slight deterioration can change its scent profile.

The quantities involved are striking.

Around 1,000 jasmine flowers are required for a single one-ounce bottle of Chanel No. 5 parfum, according to CBS News. Roughly 4,000 flowers weigh just one pound.

After harvesting, the blossoms are taken to a nearby extraction facility, where their aromatic compounds are gradually concentrated into what perfumers call an absolute — an intensely scented raw material of which only a small amount is needed in the final fragrance.

The production process remains closely connected to methods developed in Grasse more than a century ago.

Fresh jasmine is placed into extraction vats, producing a wax-like concentrate known as a concrete. That material is then refined again to isolate the highly concentrated jasmine absolute eventually incorporated into the perfume.

The scale behind even a small amount of finished essence illustrates why the flower is so precious: tens of millions of blossoms may be required to produce a relatively modest quantity of concentrated aromatic material.

Jasmine is not the only important flower in Chanel’s fields.

The May rose, or Rosa centifolia, is another traditional Grasse ingredient associated with No. 5. The perfume combines natural floral materials with synthetic molecules, including the famous aldehydes that helped make the original composition radically modern when it appeared in 1921.

Chanel itself describes No. 5 as an aldehydic floral built around May rose and jasmine. In the extrait version, Grasse jasmine remains an especially important house ingredient.

The fragrance was created after Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel asked perfumer Ernest Beaux to develop a scent unlike the simpler floral perfumes popular at the time.

Beaux presented several samples. Chanel selected the fifth, giving the fragrance its name.

Its extensive use of aldehydes created an abstract, almost impossible-to-identify floral effect rather than making the perfume smell simply of one recognizable flower. But underneath that modern construction were natural ingredients whose quality remained critical.

Grasse jasmine became one of them.

The continued use of locally grown flowers has become more remarkable because Grasse itself has changed dramatically.

At the beginning of the 20th century, thousands of acres around the town were devoted to flowers used by the perfume industry.

Over subsequent decades, much of that agricultural land disappeared as the French Riviera developed, property prices rose and perfume manufacturers increasingly sourced ingredients from countries where cultivation and labor were cheaper.

CBS reported that the region went from roughly 12,000 acres of flower fields during its early-20th-century peak to about 142 acres today.

Chanel’s agreement with the Mul family therefore served a purpose beyond simple purchasing.

By guaranteeing a customer for the flowers, the fashion house helped make it economically viable to preserve fields that could otherwise have been sold or converted to other uses.

The arrangement also gave Chanel much tighter control over its supply chain. The company could influence cultivation practices, harvest timing and extraction while maintaining access to flowers grown specifically for its fragrances.

In luxury terminology, that level of control is increasingly valuable because provenance has become almost as important as the finished product itself.

The flowers offer something that synthetic chemistry alone cannot reproduce exactly: a connection between the perfume and a specific landscape, agricultural tradition and history.

At the same time, Chanel No. 5 has never been purely a “natural” perfume.

Modern fine fragrances combine botanical extracts with laboratory-created molecules. Synthetic ingredients allow perfumers to create effects that flowers alone cannot achieve and provide greater consistency across large-scale production.

No. 5 was revolutionary precisely because Beaux combined valuable natural floral materials with aldehydes in a way that made the final scent more abstract than the ingredients themselves.

That balance remains central to the perfume more than 100 years later.

For the Mul family, however, the work remains intensely physical and seasonal.

The jasmine still has to flower.

The harvest still has to begin in the morning.

The blossoms still have to be picked one by one.

And the perfumer still depends on farmers preserving precisely the characteristics that made Grasse jasmine valuable in the first place.

That relationship is what makes the farm unusually important to Chanel.

Global luxury companies typically operate through vast international supply chains involving thousands of suppliers and highly standardized industrial processes. Yet one of the most recognizable fragrances in the world continues to depend in part on a comparatively small agricultural operation and on knowledge passed through generations of the same family.

The contrast is striking.

Chanel No. 5 is sold globally and has become an enduring symbol of French luxury, but one of the ingredients at its heart remains tied to a very specific landscape in Provence.

Its continued survival illustrates a broader truth about high-end perfumery: technological innovation may transform the industry, but certain scents cannot be separated easily from the places and people that produce them.

For Chanel, preserving those flower fields is therefore not simply an exercise in nostalgia.

It is a way of preserving the smell of No. 5 itself.