I meet Guerlain at his country house at Les Mesnuls, outside Paris, the estate he inherited from his grandfather. For a name that once graced the imperial courts of all Europe, the Guerlains are an unshowy dynasty. Where the descendants of other great mercantile families frittered away their legacies, generations of Guerlains have doggedly gone about their business, a business they have elevated into an art. The family’s four noses have created not merely great names in perfumery, but its very genres: Jacques Guerlain inaugurating the oriental family with Shalimar (1925); his uncle, Aimé, giving rise to modern fragrance itself by introducing the synthetic note in Jicky (1889). The devotion the house inspires in turn borders on slavish. Jean Harlow’s benighted first husband, tortured by impotence, drenched himself in her signature Mitsouko before taking his life. Catherine Deneuve’s frustrated housewife in Belle de Jour hurls a bottle across her boudoir before embarking on a life of sin.

Jean-Paul Guerlain is a magisterial presence. However, the role of figurehead was never intended to be his, being an honour reserved for the eldest son. But at 16, beset by sight problems, he was taken under the wing of his grandfather, the legendary Jacques. There could be no more eminent teacher than this creator of Après L’Ondée, L’Heure Bleue, Mitsouko, Shalimar, Vol de Nuit. The moment of succession was sealed two years later when the young man was set the apparently insuperable task of creating a daffodil essence. In one flacon his fate was sealed. Jean-Paul would become keeper of the Guerlinade, the arcane blend of tonka bean, iris, rose and jasmine that is the house’s olfactory hallmark.

Even by the standards of his gene pool, this fourth-generation talent proved astonishingly precocious. Vétiver, the fragrance he himself wears, remains an incredibly accomplished creation for a youth of 22. Luca Turin, the scientist savant of Chandler Burr’s The Emperor of Scent, describes it as “a temperament as much as a perfume”. “I was working in the garden of a friend,” says Guerlain, “and there was a wonderful old gardener who kept Gitanes in his black serge jacket. A tobacco and earth smell -very clean. That was the inspiration of Vétiver: roots, earth.” Perhaps he saw the opportunity to mark out some personal territory, as the house could claim very few (intentionally) masculine fragrances. Habit Rouge followed, a saddle-warm leather, polished where its predecessor is clean. And, three decades later, the magnificently assertive Héritage.

This genius for masculine fragrance was matched, many would say surpassed, by an audacity for the feminine. Chamade - a vegetal, jasmine note atop a powdery, balsamic base - was his response to the revolutionary fervour of May ’68. Despite this, it is a fragrance that unfurls with aristocratic languor. Nahéma, ten years later, was altogether different; a tender, ultra-feminine romance of rose and mossy woods. But it was Samsara, in 1989, that finally proclaimed his genius: a lavish drench of sandalwood. In 60 years the company had enjoyed no greater success.

His inspiration, as ever, came from the fairer sex. “I do not think you are able to create perfume if you are not in love,” he states. “Perfume is made to make a woman more sexy, more desirable. What’s left when you turn out the light? A woman’s femininité and her perfume.” This cult of feminity is a Guerlain tradition: the Empress Eugénie-inspiring Eau de Cologne Imperiale; Claude Farrere’s heroine Mitsouko provoking her namesake; Mumtaz Mahal, for whom the Taj Mahal was tribute, the heroine of Shalimar. But John-Paul Guerlain has transformed this romance into his raison d’être, not least in his enthrallment to his “Lady of Samsara”, the great love of his life.

“I had a wonderful muse,” he explains. “That story lasted for 19 years. I hope it will start back. I have created many things for her. She has a lot of power.” She is, I learn elsewhere, Décia de Pauw, an Englishwoman and, like her lover, an accomplished equestrian. Her words on receiving Samsara were: “This is the greatest gift a man ever gave a woman.” His reply: “I was but the stone mason, you the architect.” He alludes to her in longing terms throughout, tenderly proffering her portrait. However, in true Gallic style, he admits that current romantic arrangements dictate a strategic distribution of her photographs. (“Different women for different perfumes. For inspiration… research!”)

A man who is master to all but his mistresses, Guerlain remains in possession of an absolute perfectionism. Nahéma, of which he is most proud, required 500 tests to devise. Two decades later, it is on its 900th incarnation. Only so exacting a talent could have responded to the company’s takeover by the luxury goods group LVMH, and his own retirement in 2002, as an opportunity for more creativity. He still produces several scents a year for Guerlain.

Meanwhile, he has resolved to embark upon the most significant creations of his life: a fragrance for the woman who remains his inspiration and one to wear himself to lure her back. “I do not think they will be sold. She is my muse; I am happy to work for her. My heart is to create perfume for the woman with whom I am in love.” It would be impossible for such sorcery not to have its effect.

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