You may be turned off by the very thought of yet another scented candle (how many did Santa deliver, I wonder?).

I certainly thought I was all candled out - until I found myself in one of those delightfully idiosyncratic little shops that still lurk in the best cities and discovered that, yes, there was after all something new to be done with that ubiquitous little number.

I happened upon Maison de Cire Trudon, 78 Rue de Seine, in Paris - if you're heading there, put this gem on your list of places to visit.

Cire Trudon, founded in 1643, is the oldest candle-maker in the world still in business, and since last July its candles have also been available in the UK, from Liberty, Roja Dove Haute Parfumerie at Harrods, Browns (www.brownsfashion.com) and Petersham Nurseries in Richmond, Surrey.

I love a bit of history with my candles, so it's worth knowing that Cire Trudon was official supplier of candles to the court at Versailles (supplying Louis XIV, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette right up until their untimely ends). It made them for churches, for Napoleon (who once ordered a wax candle bust of his newly born son, a version of which you can still buy today) and, in more recent times, for Dior, Kenzo, Hermès and many other impressive names.

And now the company is enjoying another renaissance - thanks to its new live-wire creative director, Ramdane Touhami, a sometime art director and designer who was responsible for founding King Size, the French skatewear brand, and for developing L'Epicerie, the the cult concept store. He fell in love with the brand, bought a half-share in it and decided to make “the best candles we could possibly make”.

The man once described by The New York Times as “a subversive trendsetter” dug into the archives for two years (“in the past lay everything we needed for the future,” he says), then set about finding the best ingredients that he could. He uses no petrochemical derivatives, only vegetable waxes made from palm oil, rice, soy and copra (coconut) . “They're a hundred times more expensive than paraffin wax,” he tells me, “but if you use paraffin wax you might as well have a car exhaust in the room.”

The wick is made from organic cotton and each deep green glass is made by hand in an old glassworks at Vinci in Tuscany. Even the gold labels for his candles are made by an ancient champagne house.

Which brings me to the perfumes that Touhami has created - all 18 of them. And these really are something different.

“Most scented candles are perfumed with ingredients that cost somewhere between €20 and €30 (£18 to £27) a kilo,” says Touhami. “I put no price limit on ours and mostly they cost between €200 and €300 (£182 to £273) a kilo.”

“I hate candles that have the sort of perfume that you might wear on your body. Our smells are different - we re-create the smell of the Mirror Gallery and the polished wooden floor of Versailles (Roi Soleil); we conjure up the fragrance of old stone walls in the shade of cloisters and convents (Carmelite); of churches (Spiritus Sancti); of freshly washed linen and swilled-down tiled floors (Manon) and of leather and tobacco in an old hotel in Havana (Ernesto).”

The new scents range is packed with evocations from French history, nostalgic memories of times and places long gone. Each candle is £45: for more information see www.united-perfumes.com.

Other news for the candle aficionado: DayNa Decker candles (sold at Space NK) have wicks made of organic wood so that they crackle as they burn - just like a real fire. The 6oz candles are £45.

Price's Candles is another company that's busy reinventing itself. Quite apart from its plain creamy candles - to which I'm addicted - there is now a collection of “odour-eaters” designed to get rid of the smell of tobacco, stale cooking or anything else noxious. These are available as tea lights , in small tins or as normal candles in a glass: prices start at £2.59 for a tea light, £3.99 for a candle in a tin or jar. Plain church candles start at £2.92, and you can shop online at www.prices-candles.co.uk.

Lastly, a couple of practical tips: the first time that you light a scented candle you should allow it to burn for at least two hours to make sure that the whole of the surface is melted. If you burn it for a shorter time it melts only a small portion of the surface and you end up with those telltale circles that burn only the same small circle of wax.

Also, trim the wick each time you're about to light a candle - this makes it burn better and prevents the old wick from falling back into the candle and creating unpleasant smoke. It should be trimmed to no more than half an inch (1.3cm).

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