Welcome to a perfumer's blog on perfumery

This post aims at answering Joyce’s question “how is the oil note obtained?”, at least partially. But before we go there, we have some stinky news for you:
The stinky orchid that blooms once a year is stinking again! Yes, it is this time of the year again. After a couple of months on the balcony, fighting with the elements, my rotten meat with vanilla scented beauty is playing its tricks again. At least, it is somewhat discrete.

Lest discrete was the perfumer last Saturday before dinner, playing mindlessly with C14 (peach), aurantiol (orange flower), et al. , resulting in a “puhhhh, can’t you wash this off!” by the W.-factor, being worried about olfactory destruction of the Couscous on the table. Well, maybe  we should rather stick to smoky woody leathery scents.
Or oily lines, like for Mr. Mechanic. So, how to get an “oily” accord, without having to extract my Saab’s intestines?

In a senses, it is quite simple:
Take vetiverylacetate, myrrh, cistus, birchtar, iso-butylchinoleine, styrax, oakmoss and set these ingredients in the right amount together in the background of a hyacinth accord that brings out the oily note even better, due to the stingy green lines. Of course, you might replace this or that and complement by other ingredients, like the birch tar being somewhat replaceable the cypriol.
I would guess, the most important ingredient in the above list is Styrax, being present in minute amounts. This is a green, quite aggressive, pungent, stinky oil, from Liquidambar orientalis, that  you get by destructive destillation of styrax resin. A minute amount of it and you get a leathery line, and -if you take very, very little- it helps you underlining the gleaming beauty of flowers. Add a touch more and you enter true leather territory. Rough, old leather, worn saddles and dirty boots.  And yet a touch more and you find yourself in garage territory.
IFRA: Max 0.6% in the fragrance and trust me…0.6% is a lot!
(picture: Stinky orchid, blooming and stinking in Zurich these days)

One side effect of the bottle on a journey (for newbies on this blog: bottle translates into an experimental “hyacinth and a mechanic” fragrance): From time to time I can post about it here, which comes in handy on Fridays when my brain 1.0 suffers from exhaustion.
So, here is the noteworthy wish: (Follow this link to noteworthy fragrances)..”.make a version without oil”, which for me translates into: without the mechanic! A version without oil. hmmm…. (brain falls in sleep mode)….
Hmm…never thought of it. It seems to me that for some girls the mechanic is somewhat too close and a dominant guy. I got little feedback from men so far and wonder how they would deal with Mr. mechanico. Now, I really never thought of it: What might happen if we get the hyacinth delivered by a clean Mr. Fresh? Hmmm, a bunch of lost flowers? An explosion of sharp green hyacinths? When there is a little bit time left for a game: I have to try it….

Until then: Please read the latest comment by Victoria from one of greatest places on earth, on the Bottle on a journey, following this link. Her comment is really lovely and is a mirror of what I had in mind. After -I do not know how many hours- fiddling around to get this green sharpness of natural hyacinth, it feels great. Fragrant greetings for your weekend.
  (picture: An old machine with zero oil drops….seen in Windhook, Namibia 2007)

Did you know that there are about 3 Mio fully automatic coffee machines standing around in Switzerland? You know: The machines that, upon the click of a button, produce a steaming coffee with a nice coffee creamy foam, in about 30 seconds. Did you know that these coffee machines, not shutting down in order to be ready all day long, for their 30 seconds of coffee making, use more electricity than 100′000 Swiss households use on average per year. Now, that’s WOW.
“Crazy”, I say to the W.-factor and we start calculating how much energy we have saved by NOT having an automatic coffee thing, but doing the coffee the way the settlers at the big, second-last frontier did it. Well, almost ;-) We have discovered electricity and the super-cool invention of a kettle. In that sense, compared to the settlers, we are ultra-modern. Compared to our coffee machine owing friends in Switzerland we are chimpanzees.
The last frontier, by the way, is not space, it seems, but our brain that I kindly ask our creator to fix and finally come out with a second beta version. Brain 2.0. Might come in handy these days. With an upper limit for hate functions, please. It does not need a lot of fixing, just some adjustments, making sure it is used.
“But you are a stand-by p…,too!”, goes the W.-factor, because I always forget to turn things off. I plea guilty and confess: Yes, I am one of the guys. It is estimated that in Switzerland one nuclear power plant runs to produce the stand-by power for Switzerland’s semi-sleeping machines. Thus, give me brain 2.0, please!, and an easy upgrade. I do not want to de-install 1.0 first.

So, finally, incense: Is on stand-by, too. I ordered all I need to produce incense extrême and it will be delivered to my house in about 7-10 days. But I do not see me coming up with it until x-mas. It is more likely to be spring. For some, good reasons. To be followed….

but before the vetiver: Maybe we are witnessing a change in perfumery trends. A saturation in light of a never ending stream of new scents, and even more celebrity fragrances. More on Nowsmellthis on the decreasing US sales figures for perfumes, and the article referred therein. The end of fruity florals? Or has the time come for a -against the trend-fruity tauer floral with a touch of smoke….hehehe: One day, one day there must be a fruity floral made by Tauer ;-)

So back to vetiver: I have a trial version that comes somewhat close to where I wanted to go. (I have many trial versions, this is the best so far) But: Built on the notes pepper, lily of the valley, orris (a touch), vetiver, cedarwood, and ambergris, it is somewhat too smeary going from one note to the other. The contrast is not bright enough, like a grey patina covering a picture, and the vetiver woody notes are not present enough.

The next step was: Reducing and reconfiguring while leaving what was ok. The pepper I left intact, with added coriander and a touch (just a hint) cardamom bringing out the airiness of black pepper; reducing the lily of the valley accord and reconfiguring the woody notes, trying to bring out vetiver more. The orris is skipped. The lily of the valley accord consists now of 11 compounds, which is still complex enough. In order to increase the presence of vetiver , I reduced it (!) but complemented it with Kephalis allowing me to bridge foreground and background better and at the same time bringing out the contrast. A paradox: Sometimes less is more, provided you set the right accents. Kephalis brings in a touch smokiness, and links to cedarwood and an ambergris line. Here I added a twist by ambrein, the cistus ladaniferus absolute, for warmth and to round things up.

Again: We wait for maturation……at least there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel.

(picture: the W.-factor passing a Swiss tunnel)

I used to have a nice boss (really a nice guy) who was a big fan of bouquets, technology bouquets, thinking that a company must develop different technology lines and finally pick the right flower at the right time. This, in order to come up with the perfect product fitting perfectly a given niche and thus rounding up the technology portfolio and complementing the bouquet of products on the market. My boss had an MBA and his ideas always looked all shiny in theory.

In practice, the flowers he picked had thorns, rotten stems, or were otherwise not entirely ready to bloom like the theory would have predicted.

When working on a new, entirely new, theme, I go for a bouquet approach, too.  A new theme might mean: Missing the experience on how a particular scent (vetiver) reacts on a variety of backgrounds or in company of compound x. Missing this experience and enjoying to gamble with scents I test alternative scenarios. Of course, most of the scenarios develop into something as rotten as my boss’s technology picks, but the learning curve is substantial. And finally, it is fun to see what happens with vetiver oil from Java (gorgeous! earthy, powerful, woody, smoky) when you combine it with too much of:
> Vanilla, coumarin, ambergris and patchouli: Birthday cake with initial chocolate notes fading into a pudding of cosmic dimensions.
> Aldehydes: Rotten flower with little signs of vetiver left
> Blue cypress: The chest of an 18-year old, with acute bronchitis, fever and some camphorated lotion on his chest.

But in the end: These a game trials, musing experiments. Right now: I am working on the version that I sniffed with Vero, that comes closest to the initial vision… pepper, lily of the valley and vetiver, with the floral notes bound into a woody background.
Tomorrow: A closer look at this trial, and about linking notes, like foreground and background, in perfumery.
(picture: Foreground of leaves with little water droplets, over a background being a mountain river, reflecting the early morning sun, seen a couple of days ago in Switzerland)

a real one… well: Not coal heated, but otherwise the real thing. Built in 1906, renovated and with a great view inside right into the engine. Moving pistons, huge, shiny and …oily! What a smell, bringing back childhood memories of passing the lake Zurich with my aunt. What a sight: This sheer power combined with an almost organic movements, and an oil saturated warm, humid air makes you (me) think of passionate gigantic mechanic lovers.
Thus, I found the perfect working place for my mechanic with his flowers: This steam boat would fit. The fragrance of warm, clean oil inside the boat, warm air reaching the nose, filled with a scent of 100 years ago would mix with his little flower bouquet and probably his oily skin would not matter too much anymore.

The “hyacinth and a mechanic” is now on its way again, after a short stop in Pittsburg! (where I never was)… in Pittsburg, the mechanic seems to have worked very hard in his garage and got all oily….. read more here.

I hope to be able to tell you more this week on the incense extrême and maybe some vetiver insights. Until then: Have a fragrant day!

the picture shows part of the engine, moving much too fast for my mobile phone camera….