Welcome to a perfumer's blog on perfumery

Ladies and Gentleman,

I invite you to say hello to a fellow blogger who is online since….yesterday!, but who for sure has spent years in a world of fragrances and pictures.

It is someone with whom I have exchanged e-mails from time to time. And I am proud on his review. And I look forward to read more….

  leaving foot steps….
More you find here on sorcery of scent 

There are a few Swiss German words that are hard to translate, one of these is “grusig” . However, it fits perfect with the weather. A helpful page for those who want to visit this green country of the many rains: Eldrid’s quick guide to Swiss German. Thus, disgusting is a useful translation, but a little bit strong. Bottom line: We have this weather again that makes us stay in our solid houses (because it is soooooo wet everywhere), sit in dark kitchens (because it is sooooooooo grey everywhere) and eat our rotten milk products (cheese, that is soooooooo good with warm bread in the evening) and dream of the Mediterranean sea
On this page we might also learn that “Summervogel” translates into butterfly. “Summervogel isch cool”, we might say around here, and it would give a nice name for a fragrance, indeed. Summervogel… haven’t seen one in a long time, too wet! I’ ll bet they made their Mediterranean dreams come true and flew over the Alps.
So it is grusig and it got late because I had a spontaneous visitor coming by and we sniffed our noses into anesthetic states, discussing things like “why does a rose oil does not smell like a rose flower?”  or “what smells birchtar like?” [you know…the famous ingredient in Lonestar Memories] and “why are these Tauer perfume bottles so… “0815, nullachtfünfzehn”?”, which translates into average looking…
It got late for exactly this last question

So I made a reproduction test batch of the vetiver fragrance that still has no name: Let it sit in the fridge undiluted for a month and then diluted for a month and then it was ready for testing. Even when incrementally approaching a final formula in endless trials, and even when carefully documenting each amount: A final reproduction test is important before going full scale into 50 liters. Yep. 50 liters is what I asked for. The unnamed Vetiver fragrance will be the first fragrance that someone else produces for me.

Hopefully.

The final confirmation is still open due to  legal ethanol issues. But I was told it is just a pro forma thing. Yep. We live in the time of bureaucrats. Since the very  beginning of Tauer Perfumes I did not use phtalate denatured ethanol (for health reasons, you never know….) and instead used the more expensive, harder to get ethanol that contains bitrex, a compound that makes it taste bitter. This quality of ethanol is more regulated because it is easer to transform it by a simple distillation step olivinto yummie wodka or anything else that sells for a good price and gives you sweet dreams in the night and a head the size of an UEFA EURO2008 ™ football. Imagine: Foodball games as registered trademark….

So we wait.  And listen to Black Mahagoni II by Moodyman (When she follows) and wonder whether there are not better names for my vetiver fragrance. More original. More like I find them in my iPod sound title list…

Like root zone  or jungle drop or Jangala.  (Sanskrit origin of the word jungle).

Finally: The vetiver without name proofed to be reproducible. Fragrant greetings from behind a rain curtain.

After having packed and sent away a big fat scented parcel for the US, ordered more boxes and ribbons and stuff, and continued with the discovery sample set thing…. this is what I do right now: Preparing lot number 4 for Lonestar Memories.

Starting with Vanillin. Yummie.

  Thus, for the number lovers….
32 ingredients.

18 natural extracts, absolutes and resins.
Naturals comprising 25% of total mass

2% of total fragrant material is Jasmine absolute.

1% of total fragrant material is Rose absolute.

All goes into the 15 lt can for maturation and is later in 4 weeks diluted into a 25 liter aluminum can.

Oh my… this is expensive!  Perfumer continues mixing with shaky hands  ;-)

Talking sample set box with ribbon (gold! Yep…..):
I had a creative boost yesterday after having had diner. Glucose helps the brain!

Thus, this post is glimpse into a process of how to eventually come up with a flyer.
I thought, I will make this 1/2 A4 flyer, folded in the middle, independent of individual fragrance descriptions or visuals that go with individual fragrances. First, inside the box you will find all fragrance samples with flyers, visuals and text explaining in a few words the scent. Second, I want to continue using the flyer in a year when I have another fragrance on the market…

Thus: Just nice pictures, neutral.

Like this one. A kind of daisy, seen last summer on a Swiss alp.

Take photoshop, make the background all black, switch to white and color the flower.

Add text (on the right: “discover fragrant worlds” (in German , the verb comes at the end), on the left “enjoy handicraft from Switzerland”
Page 1 is to your right, page 4 is to your left (after folding 1/2 A4).
And following you see the inner side of the folded flyer without text.

I think, I will need to put “Tauer Perfumes” somewhere, clearly visible, a little bit larger then the small text at the bottom, that I use to explain in 1 sentence stuff….
  and the inside: future page 2 is to your left, future page 3 is to your right (after folding 1/2 A4)

I visited the shop in Zurich last week on Thursday and while discussing stock markets, sales figures and Italian postal non-services, we came up with a new product.

A new product at least for the shop in Zurich and for myself when serving the press. In principle it is very simple: The shop in Zurich gives samples away, for free, the longer the more, and clients usually ask how much they are… When ordered over the web shop, we charge 4 Swiss Francs per sample for 2. 5ml (it says 1.5 but is closer to 2.5 ml indeed) . This Thursday I have met friends and made a discovery set:

All perfume samples in a white box with a silver ribbon around it.

Pascal, the shop owner sees it, and wants it. For his clients. Because it is so much nicer. So we came up with the idea of preparing these sample boxes, but I think I need a flyer going on top of the box with the samples. I imagine either a 1/4 A4 flyer (like you know it from my fragrances) or I imagine 1/2 A4 size, folded in the middle and being like a two page brochure, with some Doo-Ah, Doo-Ah, Doo-Ah, Doo-Ah, Doo-Ah, Doo-Ah, Doo-Ah, Doo-Ah, Doo-Ah marketing groove on Tauer Perfumes.

(more on doo-ah’s here on 6lyrics.com and here, on youtube….)


You know…not a lot of text, just one sentence per page maybe. With a few pictures. As we can not ship boxes like this to the US, we would stick to Zurich shop to start with. Then we will see. (as it is more than 2 cm thick Swiss postal non-services charges 18 Francs, and thinks they can safe themselves from privatization. Ha! Can’t wait for DHL offering regular mail services for letter size items!)

Now, the challenge…. what pictures and what German text. I am thinking things like discover…., hand made….., art of perfume making…., inspiring… but somehow the pictures and text don’t flow.

Maybe it is because of the latest orange flower trial that I mixed, and keeps me breathless and that made the W.factor follow me like a dog as I immediately diluted an aliquot because I couldn’t wait, knowing that I need to wait for two weeks at least as things get better when matured and I sprayed it on a strip and the W.factor goes like “oh my God, what have you sprayed in this room? This is so good!”

The box can maximally fit 9 samples ;-)

This Saturday, my perfumery body in arms (Vero) and me sniffed our way through the orange flower samples. We came up with a clear favorite out of three: Number 4 is best. But it could even be better, adding a green line (hyacinth) in the front and maybe a little bit of Styrax resinoid in the back might help. And again we realized that more is not always more. Another trial that features about twice as much orange flower absolute smells ok, but the entire orange flower is hidden. It misses the punch coming from the top notes that lift the flowers in the middle.

Thus, the take home message: More is not always more. It depends very much on the context. Ah ya…before I forget: Orange flower costs a fortune….Thus, “less is more” comes in handy
Finally, this Sunday saw me digging in my cellar trying to get an overview about stocks. Lonestar Memories sells like hot cake these days. I will need to mix another batch the next couple of days. The goal here: Working my way around the planned holidays in about 6 weeks. Bretagne. By bike. Hurray!

Another hurray: lala land  is waiting for me again.  For us, to be precise. More later on this channel.

Greetings from the Lonestar factory. After a lot of administrative taks yesterday: today we label them, and put them into boxes.

I wish you a wonderful weekend!

Well, well. It is June here in Zurich and it is raining. Quite normal for the season. Zurich is situated in the moderate temperature and unfortunately wet zones with lots of water falling down out of grey skies keeping our gardens green and our snails happy.

I am pouring Lonestar Memories today…and will mix some orange flowers later, dreaming of dry lands.

Let us talk composition and rules in this post. While doing so, I am sniffing a first trial of a clean orange flower that might one day complement last year’s X-mas soap (lemongras, mandarin et al)…. But I am not done with the formula, yet. There is an aliquot of “50″ left in my excel that runs up to 1000. I think I will add a twist rose and some Lilial, and Styrax resinoid.
So you see: This is the trick. When writing down a formula, you are supposed to always refer to the same final amount. For ease of calculations and mixing: Usually 1000 is the imaginative amount. Meaning: you break down your formula into aliquots of 1000. Like: 85 Lyral, 20 Orange flower absolute from Spain, 10 rose essential oil, 75 aurantiol, 8 C12 MNA, 4 rans-Undecenal, 25 Vanillin, 40 Mandarin red,  etc.. All the way up to 1000.

The advantage: It is much easier to learn from your mistakes and compare formulas. Of course, in order to mix your formulas you have to break down the numbers again. In my case, for first trials, 80 translates in 1 ml .