Fresh air from Eryri... at £25 a bottle:
SELLING THE ‘SMELL’ OF N.WALES BIG BUSINESS
IT sounds like a joke but air farming – selling jars of fresh air – is big business. Latest to jump on the bandwagon is relocation website My Baggage, which is selling bottles of crisp Snowdonia air for £25.
The company is offering “the smell of home” to homesick expats living overseas this Christmas.
One happy customer on the Indonesian island of Bali was delighted with his bottle of Welsh air, captured from the “misty summit of Snowdon”.
“Bali is quite a humid climate and the wet heat can become too much at times,” wrote expat Peter in a review.
“It makes me miss home as there is nothing quite like the Welsh countryside.
“Who would’ve thought you can get a bit of Snowdonia in Bali?”
Buying air in a jar has proved particularly popular in heavily-polluted cities in the Far East.
Some firms sell thousands of bottles each month for upwards of $160 (£120).
Not content with Welsh air, My Baggage is offering bottles from each of the home nations.
It is also selling limited edition bottles with smells captured from the likes of the London Underground and a Norfolk fish and chip shop.
Each 500ml of air comes with a cork stopper.
My Baggage said this allows buyers “many weeks or even months of use”.
In doing so, Brits living overseas can get a whiff of home to “reconnect” them with family and friends, said the company.
A spokesman said: “We know from published research that our sense of smell is very evocative when it comes to emotions.”
A big player in the fresh air market is Brit Leo De Watts, who founded Aethaer to raise awareness of the impact of global air pollution.
Each Aethaer jar costs 980 Hong Kong dollars – around £95 – which is reinvested to create cheaper breathing masks.
The firm’s luxury air is “harvested” by air farmers who put bottles in special nets and run through fields.
It pledges that its air is “not filtered, pressurised, or processed in any way”.
For “air connoisseurs”, each Aethaer product is described in elaborate detail.
Welsh air, for example, has a “morning dew feel to it” with “vibrant and flavoursome undertones”.
A spokesman said: “Aethaer was created to bring attention to air pollution, which threatens over 90% of the world’s population.
“Clean air is now so rare it comes with a price.”
My Baggage is seeing orders for its bottles to be sent abroad as Christmas gifts.
It said it will fulfil special customer requests by bottling air from any UK location.
This raises the intriguing prospect of salty aromas from Rhosneigr, peaty smells from the Denbigh Moors – and the unmistakable whiff of fried squirrel from Gwrych Castle.