Welcome to a perfumer's blog on perfumery

Making perfumes is a lot about ordering fragrant stuff from different places, some of them abroad, keeping stocks and paying bills. I try to get as much as possible from one supplier, but some things I need to get from the producers directly, such as the CO2 extracted Frankincense. Globalization comes in handy there. Without e-mail, internet, on-line banking and speedy delivery across continents, making niche perfumes would be more tricky. Thus, I am globalization winner.
Thus, I got this parcel the other day, delivered to my house, but unfortunately it wasn’t Momo. The W. - factor took it and it was delivered by this yellow coloured government owned monopolist that makes its client’s faces turn green. Well, I guess you know what’s coming…

Politicians and others always talk about “service publique” when it comes to the postal services; there in remote rural Switzerland it means letters to any place, and a post office more or less near by. Here in urban Switzerland it translates into closed post offices and invoices for parcels from abroad. Besides a reasonable amount for taxes (can’t complain there with a tax rate of 7.6%), the bill features some service fees: No service publique without service fees. Like 30 Swiss Francs for handling, 10 Francs for handling and another 10 Francs for ….handling. The wording is different, but this is the bottomline: 50 CHF for handling a little! parcel at customs.

Thus, I wondered how many miles this guy at customs walked around and was handling my parcel, must have been more than half an hour for sure. Otherwise the service fee would not make sense. I imagine hundreds of guys and girls carrying parcels forth and back, handling them for hours, turning them up and down, caressing my parcel, whipping the dust off its brown paper after its long journey, polishing the polyethylene coating of the bills, maybe they give it a little brush, too. Only interrupted from time to time by phone calls from clients, wondering what service fee xyz really is about.

Thus, this is today’s bottom line if you are a client of Swiss Post, too: Do not call and disturb them. Otherwise, they might have to charge more! Thank you for your understanding.

Yesterday, for the first time since about 10 days, the grey nosey days seemed to come to an end. Not so the grey days in the Zurich area. One day, I will call the TV weather lady, telling her that I do not care about the sunshine in TV Zurich Country (that’s her way to describe the region around CS and UBS and the lake in the middle. Here you can see what kind of weather we expect today…) ABOVE 1000 meters or so. We pour miserable creatures live our grey life down here, where it was grey due to high fog for the last week, today it is going to be grey due to rain clouds and later this week, the TV lady told me yesterday, we will have sun shine in TV Zurich country, above 1200 meters.

But, as always, even in these grey days, where you just want to get away, leave the TV Zurich Country weather ladies, in exchange for a weather man telling you that we are going to hit the 90-ies again, there is a little light, gleaming beneath the grey cover. Citrus oils, rose oils, labdanum resinoid and warm woods.

Yes: We are talking chypre rosy trial version 3, sniffed yesterday, almost euphorically, with a nose finally giving passage again to scented molecules.
And, in order to celebrate the moment, I dared to sniff Chypre by Cotty! I never was in Crete, nor close to it. My one and only venture towards the Pelephones and beyond by train  some 25 years ago came to an abrupt end in Belgrade, where I vomited like a young pig (excuse my explicit wording here, but trust me: It fits with what I did in Belgrade), and returned with the next train to Zurich. For the protocol: This had nothing to do with Belgrade. Thus, I compare Chypre with Southern comfort memories that I have, like “la pineta”. Yesterday evening, I felt like Coty visited Crete early spring, after heavy rains.
(picture: Southern France 2006,pine tree forrest, close to the sea)

Sorry to talk again about my sniffer…but with the airways free but somehow the system still being clogged up, I feel like not being ready to seriously evaluate rose version 3 or anything else, except for the heavy stuff, like….Aromatics Elixir (for a serious review follow this link to the perfumeshrine blog by helg). I got more curious after reading her interview with Jean Jacques… and returning home after my usual Sunday half-marathon the nose was half-way ready for input. And why not start with something calibre 30, if it doesn’t kill the sniffer, it will make it stronger. So spritz, we go and wow…that IS heavy stuff! Brave perfumer. What comes to mind is people of the labyrinth and their modern rose. In the elixir we find this 70-ies rose, that I find annoyingly sticky, and yet can’t remove the nose from the paper strip. Like (but this is the eighties…) I couldn’t get my nose off the TV, featuring Dallas, followed by Denver … Now, that’s what I call a role model, not these strange desperate housewives…I never got into it. I guess I missed big money there.

I am loosing track. So, back to the elixir. The nose is not ready for any details, but there is this lilial soapiness, and a mysterious backgrand, WOW! again, a brave dose of patchouli, reminding me of a trial made a couple of weeks ago, sitting in a corner, waiting to be finished, another line towards a rose. Both, this trial and aromatics elixir need a closer look once the system works as it should. Maybe I need to come up with a walk-in-paper-strip spraying technique, though!
“So, what else is up, until the sniffer is behaving again”, you might ask.

“Well”, I might answer, “this is a secret! Arrrgh…I wished I talk about it, but that’s the poiint with secrets. Thus, when not jogging, cooking or watering orchids or sniffing elixirs, I was working on my second electronic brain Sunday afternoon for a little future project that still is a secret.”

The nose still feels like connected to a vacuum cleaner and is quite useless. Snifferless existence.

But….there is light on the horizon! Enjoy your week end. Fragrant greetings to you all.

  (Andy’s pix of today: well, I guess you get it….)

If you want to get an idea of how the internet changed our life: Think travelling and flying 20 years ago. You wanted to get from here to there? You had to get it done by someone else. Now you can do it all yourself. Cruise the digital world first to get the best, cheapest, most convenient trip you want. Including a car once you got there.

I still remember my first trip to the US, when I was 20, travelling for 3 months with a gigantic car and a lovely friend, all across the US, starting in Florida, driving west, New Orleans, Dallas, Las Vegas, San Francisco, north into Oregon, east towards NY, down to Washington, all the way to Miami again.

The flight to Miami was the cheapest I could get back then. It started in Brussels (yeah…had to first take the train for 8? hours to Brussels…), and was 1390 Swiss Francs. That was a lot back then. Maybe we shouldn’t forget numbers like these when complaining the next time about gas prices; next years flight to LA was 740 Swiss Francs….
So I got my deal to LA, 10% off, including my little car, waiting for me in LA March 27, being my best metallic friend until April 3 when we will part. I get sweaty hands when thinking in me flying west again….pure joy.

Still being without a functional sniffer, except for rare moments, thus: A post on branding. These rare moments, by the way, are of little pleasure. It is more like  “what smells so badly around here (talking gym)?”, or “pouh! I can’t stand it any more! (talking perfume departments). But then: Who am I to complain? I am enjoying the miracles of a functional immune system and it will take another day or two or three to dive again in an ocean of scents.

So, branding. I heard the perfect definition yesterday, going like “Branding is people knowing what you promise and you keeping this promise. That’s all”. Amen.

So here I am, snifferless perfumer, thinking about my promise and about people knowing….Maybe I have to work there a little bit. Not on my promise “perfumes made with love” (…hehehe… perfumes made in the niche of a niche of a niche…), but I have my doubts that folks know about it.  It may be time next year to place a little note going with my fragrances. “…what you just bought is a niche fragrance made with love….thank you”. You know what I mean …something like that.

sniiifff

*perfumer off looking for cheap flights because ebookers offers 10% discount today*

Ice and cryogenics and other medicinal use of ice was yesterday’s feature theme on ARTE (one of the few TV channels worth watching besides home order TV and SciFi). After fiddling with text to come up with a somewhat decent invitation for mine and Pascal’s X-mas thing, this reportage was the perfect topic to go to bed with. The story was well told: There are folks that have themselves frozen as soon as they are declared dead. Which makes sense in theory: In their optic, being dead means that some biological processes come to an end and others take over. Like the suicide programme of cells. But, this takes a while. And in the mean time you are transferred into the state of ice cream and wait. In theory. In praxis there are still no good tools around that would prevent ice crystals from damaging whatever is left.

Unfreezing these modern mummies might result in a similar result we know from freezing strawberries: Red wobbly matter.
To top it all: One guy even froze his hamster for resurrection at one happy day. This is sweet. Eternal life for hamsters? Or a selfish trick?, like “if the hamster survives unfreezing, you can wake me up, too!” I just hope that this hamster’s and his master’s soul are not frozen in liquid nitrogen, too.
So, I went to bed, dreaming of frozen hamsters. And: Of the x-mas thing! Hurray….Mark your calendar if you life nearby Zurich!

Saturday, December 15
Starting at 17.00
Spiegelgasse 29, 8001 Zurich
At Mirroir des modes (next to Medieval art&vie)

we will have a scent apero again. Scents and stories and a little bit of wine. Everyone is invited. This year’s theme: “Weihrauch und orientalische Geschichten” (translates into Incense and oriental stories)

I will present the Incense extrême and Egon Fässler will seduce with oriental stories. I can’t wait….
(Picture: My dreams of tonight…frozen hamsters)

This week is going to be the week of confessions and running noses.

Confession number 1: Haven’t done anything useful this weekend except for treadmill exercises and jogging like crazy forth and back. There was hope that the virus might get exhausted, too. Forget it.

Confession 2:  I cooked Saturday, all afternoon, for guests expected later in the evening. They did not turn up because they were invited for next Saturday. As we waited a long time in front of the “amuse bouche”, it got too late to invite other folks. Thus, we had dinner for two on Saturday, featuring goat cheese, French bread, dried tomatoes and a bottle of Champagne, followed by an assorted green salad with fresh grilled autumn mushrooms, we happily drank the red Barossa while biting into our 1.3 kg marinated beef (roast) with a gorgeous sauce and mashed potatoes (featuring lots of spices like clove, cinnamon, dark and white pepper,…) and finally ended with tons of chocolate mousse, again spiced up, and a schnapps to help…

Confession 3: I don’t smell a lot these days.

As promised: A little close-up on the last vetiver trial. First, I must admit that I am rather pleased and basically want to change two things only.

First I will reduce its power a touch. This by dilution and by slightly adjusting the base notes concentration (but just a little bit). It the base you find vetiver, but my information yesterday was wrong, it is Java vetiver and vetiverol…. you find ambergris notes, cedarwood notes and a touch tonka.

Secondly I want the initial blast to be a touch less spicy, respectively I want to add a touch more citrus, thinking Grapefruit here. The spicy top notes  are pepper, coriander and a touch cardamom. I want the grapefruit to build a bridge together with methylpamplemousse (single compound that smells like a mixture of a variety of citrus peels and vibrant soft woods) into the green world of a woody lily of the valley note. This lily of the valley accord consists of 13 compounds, featuring complex mixtures such as rose absolute from Bulgaria, clary sage and ylang on the naturals side and and lilial, stemone, beta-ionone or cuminaldehyde (and more) on the synthetics side. Thus, overall this vetiver is not too complicated: 27 fragrant compounds.

Below, a vetiver trial inspired picture, drawn with photoshop and trembling hands on the wacom tablet. It turned out to be somewhat …spiritual…

(picture: A visualization of how I see the vetiver trial)

After all this buzz in previous posts follows now a serious post on perfumes and perfume making….
It is this time of the year again, where you get up while it is still dark, where you watch your skin turning white and your legs trembling while waiting for the bus in foggy and grey corners, where you try to jump from hot spot to hot spot, where you indulge in heavy, warm and cosy scents, which is exactly what I did yesterday.  Before jumping off for the gym I sprayed on some of the last Vetiver trial, diluted to around 20%, a rather balanced mix of pepper, lily of the valley and tons of vetiver (java and bourbon). After working on the treadmill and other self-torture instruments I decided to go for the next hot spot and warm up in the sauna. There, amazingly fresh and vibrant, the vetiver was still present at 90°C. I remember Roudnitska mentioning his inability to smell freshly squeezed citrus peel under these conditions (in his booklet le parfum), and usually my perfumes vanish in saunas. Not this vetiver. And you start wondering why this is. It may have to do with the size of the molecules, their volatility…

After another shower, arrived safely at home, in bed, it was still there (the vetiver) and I started to worry. That’s a tough baby and I will as next step try higher dilutions. Diluting it a little bit more might help in bringing out the top notes better. I was a little bit disappointed of the pepper (again: Tons of it in there, black pepper!). This is on the to-do-list of today.
And trying to solve the mystery of why zipping a photoshop file reduces its size by about a factor of 3. And why photoshop does not reduce its file sizes if zip can do this…. More on the vetiver tomorrow, looking into some details of its formula again.