Saw the petrichor thread and thought this deserved its own post.In Kannauj, a few hours from where I live in U.P., they've been distilling the smell of first rain for centuries.It's called mitti attar.
No flowers in it, no synthetics either. They dig clay from the riverbank, bake it into pots, smash them up, then steam distil the shards over sandalwood oil in copper vessels heated by cow dung fire.Takes weeks.The sandalwood soaks up the clay vapour and that's your attar. Wet earth on dry ground in a bottle.Most petrichor recommendations you see are synthetics built to imitate this. Kannauj is where the actual thing comes from.Curious whether anyone here has tried it and how the Western petrichor releases compare.




