This is news that should delight philatelists (and foodies). La Poste unveiled a new stamp on Thursday with the image and smell of the baguette. The day was not chosen by chance since it is Saint-Honoré, patron saint of bakers. On the stamp printed in Boulazac in Dordogne, the French baguette is wrapped with a ribbon, blue, white and red.
For La Poste, the objective of this campaign is to pay tribute to this “symbol of our gastronomy” and “this jewel of our culture”, listed as UNESCO’s intangible heritage since November 2022. “Carrier of a culture and customs, the baguette is deeply rooted in the daily practices of the French. She embodies a ritual, that of going to her bakery, a local business anchored in the regions, attracting twelve million consumers every day. The making of six billion baguettes each year confirms its emblematic status in French food heritage,” underlines the group.
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In addition to this tricolor pattern, the stamp also has another particularity: a smell of bread. To smell the scent of a bakery, simply rub the stamp, as Damien Lavaud, printer at Philaposte, explains to France Bleu: “This smell is encapsulated. […] And the difficulty for us is to deposit this ink without breaking the capsules, so that the smell can then be restored by the customer by rubbing on the stamp, and even more precisely on the baguette . It releases the odorous capsules.” This technology had already been used in the past for coffee, lavender, grass and chocolate scented stamps.
To acquire one of the 594,000 copies of “baguette” stamps, you have to pay 1.96 euros each. Since this Friday, consumers have been able to find them in the Le Carré d’entreprises store and “in many post offices,” specifies the company.