Welcome to a perfumer's blog on perfumery

Time for a little life sign. As a matter of fact, after a few days getting used to doing not too much, to having our beloved guest at home, and to slow life, we are all enjoying it.
So here is a little wrap up before I dive into sweet days of living without agenda again:
The Lonestar Memories label has finally arrived and is sticked these hours onto the flacons, boxed and stored for shipment later this year. I am so glad I made the poll! I am loving it.
And as X-mas is around the corner, cans are filled with master mixes….transforming an average Swiss household into desert land and Moroccan rose fields.
I finally have the time and leisure to work on the new website design. After a couple of hours I managed to get random image display to work. Uff.
The comments on the L’eau d’Ă©pices come in and I am very happy and grateful. A big hug to all of you who send me long mails with your thoughts on this fragrance. I appreciate a lot.

So, these are great days and to top it all: Today appeared my interview with Helg on Perfumeshrine. I loved the questions, some of them rather challenging, and I love Helg’s new layout of her blog.

Finally, the W.-factor bought a new tool, allowing to digitalize vinyls. And my days pass by with endless repetitions of my one and only vinyl, Get Down by 12th floor, the original whoopin’ mix…it works wonders on one’s adrenalin level and we all hope it inspires perfume creations, too. Here’s a little teaser…..mp3 format or wav format. (sorry for the quality, I am no sound master)
Soundtrack: Raw fusion records
Sound file: Excerpts from Get down by “12th floor”. You can get the vinyl here

Holidays continues, but you may expect another life sign at the end of next week. Fragrant greetings from holiday land.
(Picture: Lonestar Memories with the new label)
and because I am enjoying it so much…

On our way up, but still down in Walenstadt, we visited a micro distillery. I happen to enjoy some of their products from time to time and was curious to learn more about this early retired teacher who creates pieces of art. He ferments everything (contrary to what you get around the corner, where fruits are just mixed with alcohol and later distilled) and has a distillation apparatus that was designed by himself and allows distillation at reduced pressure. When you get there at his place, you would get a coffee, cheese and are invited to test whatever he has.
He has a well trained nose that is his only guide when distilling. In a sense, his craft is quite similar to perfumery. And like in perfumery, it matters very much what you put in. Here, is is critical what you put into the fermentation pot. Take cheap apples, and you will certainly feel the difference!

“Well then”, he replies on the question what he will do if some starting materials are not available anymore, “well, then there will be no schnaps. But this is the way it is. Nothing I can do about.” He is right, and I guess the same is true for perfumery. Things come and go. Most of the time, however, perfumes go because the clients don’t buy enough for modern marketing departments. Things come and go too fast these days.

So we bought the last! 1 litre bottle of a pear schnapps, that he made from fruits from trees that are cut down by now. Old, very old pear trees, unknown breed, maybe irreplaceable. There is an organization here in Switzerland, trying to save such old breeds that are at the edge of getting extinct, called “pro specie rara”, making sure that important genetic traits are conserved for future generations (website in D, F, I: http://www.prospecierara.ch/).
Prost, cheers, nastrovje!
(the distillery)
(what comes out)

When browsing through the trial versions excel file yesterday, I realized that version 3.0 has matured for a month. Wow. Time’s passing fast these days. Thus, it was time to get a new, really fast digital camera…. yes, hurray! Finally, I got it. Long awaited, in love with it for quite a while in sort of a long-distance relationship (me behind the computer, camera somewhere in a warehouse)…we are finally united. And -like in every relationship that is supposed to last- you have to work on it. I am reading a long manual which reminds me in my early product manager days when I had to write manuals…brrrr! Hard work, trust me! My new machine love and me will soon go for a walk, playing….. Before doing so: Back to the 1 month matured rose&frankincense storyline, featuring some spices, flowers, woods and balms.
So far, version 3 is the one most promising. Knowing already, that walking to mainland China might be faster then getting this baby to a finished level, there is at least some hope. The undiluted soup (under the nose right now) shows a rose that is dark and spicy without turning too fast into a soap opera, and the frankincense is well bound into woods and balms that support it and make it last. Especially the last two points I found most disappointing the last weeks.  It is amazing how little of this or that  is needed to  bring the frankincense airiness to a complete stop.

More: To stop it entirely. You know it is there, but it is gone. Trust me: No question of Frankincense quantity. 25% of the best quality Frankincense dissolves into nothingness by adding an inappropriate mix of oakmoss, ionones and irisones and others. The second last mod was most disappointing, even without any maturation…frankincense deserted land.

Thus, the purpose of this post: Tell you how some notes may complete delete other notes, eat them up, and this post will gear myself towards version 3.  Next: Look for the things that are not good, like the geranium essential oil bringing in an “old rose” touch, reconsider the aldehydes, etc. …but before that…out playing!

Biological systems are buffered. Which is nice as it allows us to dump stuff into biological systems that might ultimately harm them without much effect initially. Like dumping soap into rivers. Or ethanol into human bodies. The problem with buffered systems is the turning point, when the buffering capacity is used up in a sense. Often, we unfortunately do not know where this turning point is until we have cross it. What you witness then is the abrupt change into another state, that might again be buffered, but looks different. Like foaming rivers, or human bodies lying under the table.
There are other things in human bodies that may break, and it looks like a 42 year old bone of mine reached the limit of what it could stand and decided to give it up. At least partially. That’s what the x-ray said.
I had the pleasure to visit my local hospital’s emergency room, which is less hectic compared to what you see in the TV soaps… no drama, no nothing! Just me with my foot, a drunk lady with a flattened nose, an old lady with heart problems and another lady with a broken knee after a Tango with her husband. Well, you guess right: I was there January 1st and I felt better the moment I was in the emergency room. Anyway: After an hour or so, I got my x-ray, tried to explain the doctor that I really did nothing else than just jogging, just started running as a matter of fact, and pling! the bone went and the pain came. She diagnosed a little break of third metatarsal that will not need a cast, just some time…
All this had a few side aspects that turned out to be positive: Staying at home, enjoying the couch, turning papers and formulas upside down, closing the books for 2006 and inspecting the fragrance that is built around lavender in the head note.

Which brings me to the last point of this post: Wishes for 2007……Wish number 1: Always look for the positive side of things!

more about things in perspective of 2007 and wishes tomorrow.

(Picture: http://adam.com  normal foot x-ray)

Finally: The picture made by Ernesto Kraehenbuehl on the wall. Ernesto is a wonderful man, family father, artist and friend. Whenever I see this picture, I think in him, sitting on the banks of the river Rhein, more or less where I used to sit when I was a boy.

Well, I guess there will be plenty of time to sit there, once I am pensioned. Live sometimes moves forward in circles.

(pic: Reflexe by Ernesto Kraehenbuehl )

And for all those interested: Here is a picture of this weekend’s task….boxing.
Have a fragrant weekend.

(pic: New packaging for the 50 ml L’air du dĂ©sert marocain)

The latest trial of my fragrance, built on lavender as one of the core elements, the one with the galbanum and a touch more fir absolute and some minor modifications found its way under the nose of my buddy in arms … (excuse me, my dear Vero, but I just couldn’t resist…). Thus, armed with paper strips, some sample flacons of a variety of lavender trials we sat in the Storchen lobby, next to a couple of wealthy tourists, some from the US, smoking cigars; welcome to Europe, happy sinners! You wonder why these tobacco users did not bother me? First I love the fragrance of a freshly lit cigar or cigarette anyhow and then…if diluted…if see how the smoke brings out notes on a paper strip and sensibilises some receptors in a most positive way, at least for me. In a sense it is like a touch of birchtar bringing out wonderful facets, but as always in life: a question of how much.

Well, we sniffed lavender trials (from ok..to ohh…) and the latest versions was the starting point to discuss green notes and armoise and then sniff “Bandit” (well….) and finally “la nuit” (Pacco Rabanne) ( ahhh and roar…jungle stuff!). Bottomline: we are on a good way, and after a couple of days maturation we will have a look at it again.

Home again, I was somewhat stressed in the evening, and trembling because standing at 3°C outside of Pascal’s shop let my inner body temperature decrease to a level where an aligator would not move anymore… well, trembling I poured part of the lavender soup over my logitech keyboard. The return key is blocked since then. And the keyboard smells like paradise. As a matter of fact the whole room smells like the lavender’s base. Which is nice, but not appropriate once you want to think about other scents….

But no hurry to buy a new keyboard: I am heading off to Brussels anyway and will be back Thursday. Fragrant greetings!

I realised this morning that it is -in a first approximation- just some 10 days until the big thing happens. Maybe a couple of phone calls yesterday with mums of various children helped raising awareness and letting the adrenalin levels rise. A dream tonight did help too and after a night’s fight with avalanches somewhere in the dream mountains, a dizzy head when waking up and a growing list of things to get done before 24th, I know: There is no way out. I have to go there, where no man should have to go.

Evolution made us intelligent enough to walk on two legs, to make beer, drink it on the moon after a little hop with our two legs, we managed to put us on top of the food chain and the worst that can happen us, being the most privileged 10% of this world’s population, is a traffic jam, a missed air plane, a business meeting with our boss who suffers from a time-space discontinuum and finally buying X-mas presents too late with too many co-sufferers. Next year, I´ll promise: I will do better… but now: Let´s hunt for this pony wagon… argh
Talking about X-mas and privileges: are you aware of the fact, that the gap between us (us being the top 10% of this world`s population) and the lowest 10% is probably bigger than the gap between Louis XVI, an his entourage and his low class French fellows who ended up killing him? They killed him for good reason probably. This man was too much a symbol, and the French killed so many other French back then these days that a king more or less on the Guillotine did not really matter anymore.
Louis was hunting when in Paris the people started the revolution by taking over the Bastille. Which would be like taking over the Pentagon or the secret US prisons on Cuba. Louis wrote “nothing” in his diary (he was not successfully hunting) this day. He´d better done a horse ride downtown….

Maybe we should too, from time to time, ride downtown on this globe.

As wished by a few, find below a literal translation of my “Tagblatt der Stadt ZĂĽrich” appearance. (The pix is in colour, but I had no access to a colour scanner today… thus, tauer smiles in black&white)

“Behind every fragrance I see a picture“
The chemist Andy Tauer develops perfumes for the love of scents, soon he will make a living from his scents.

A smoky, somewhat animalic scent is spreading in the living room. “Birch tar”, says Andy Tauer immediately. This essence is part of the Lonestar Memories, which brings the picture of a camp fire to every nose.
He develop the fragrance composition in his flat in Höngg. Here, the 42 year old perfumer Andy Tauer puzzles ambitiously on new creations. ”Behind every scent I see a picture: People on their promenade or sceneries like a sunset over Marrakesch.” Especially inspiring was for him the scene of Gernouille’s birth on the market place in the movie “ The perfume” that is shown in the theatres these days. “the image language is fabulous”.
Since years the chemist is engaged enthusiastically in the world of scents. Playful at first, birthday presents for friends, today passionate with serious thoughts on commercialisation issues. He has never seen a perfumery school from inside, but visits Grasse, the famous perfume town, regularly to do some fragrance materials shopping.
A black dining table dominates the living room. Here, Andy Tauer sits daily. On it you find accurately arranged a selection of his ca. 500 essences and pipettes. He is geared to a 100 year old tradition of perfume making , with lots of essential oils and little synthetically produced compounds. “Most perfumes are composed mainly of synthetic compounds, because these can be produced more economically in large amounts”, explains Tauer. An example for such a compound is vanillin, a synthetic form of the vanilla scent.

About 2000 fragrance compounds are known, 40 to 80 are mixed into a perfume composition. The perfume industry launches about 500 new perfumes world wide annually. Tauer thinks that only a few may stand for a while, because many of them look alike. The pretension to create something entirely new he has neither. “I want to make fragrances that provoke emotions”.

Two years ago a friend asked him to create a perfume for his bookshop Medieval art&vie at the Spiegelgasse 29 that he might sell. Tauer said yes, spontaneously. The step towards commercialization fascinated him.

His first scent was born: Le Maroc pour elle. With natural oils such as Atlas cedar wood, rose and jasmine.“ The souks of Marrakesch seduced me to create this scent. “
So far, Tauer has brought 3 perfumes to the market, a forth will follow in November. Orris, an iris scent, was never planned to be commercialized. For 9 months he informed about the development of this scent. He gave away 40 samples for free at the 1year birthday of his blog. “I was overwhelmed with feedback and was begged to bring the fragrance to the market”.
Andy Tauer sees himself as craftsman, less as an artist.

It is a creative challenge that Tauer faces. He invests months, often even years in a new fragrance. It is a tedious process. “ A fragrance is never finished for me. I stop when I personally think is good enough”.

There are scents that fit with everything. Bergamot for instance. Or the rare sandalwood from India that fixes head and heart notes. But there are scents that extinguish each other, like lily and rose. “This combination easily becomes soapy.”
The perfumery as science? For Tauer it is. Using Excel he writes down how he mixes the oils and afterwards puts them drop by drop into a flacon. He then uses paper strips to test sniff a scent and he neutralizes his nose with coffee beans or a wool scarp. “Often I realize after weeks, that my fragrance won’t develop properly and then I pour it off and start again”.< Andy Tauer sees himself as craftsman, not as an artist. “For me, Edmond Roudnitska is an artist. His truly legendary lily of the valley scent Diorissimo for Dior has impressed me thoroughly.” Tauer can’t live from his perfumery work, yet. His bread and butter job is in Berne, where he informs about European research projects, mandated by the government. He misses the resources to kick off expensive marketing campaigns. But he sells at best location in town and by a distributor in the US. “Business goes very well, indeed. “ says Tauer pleased and predicts “in two years, I would like to be perfumer, only.” Maybe we will see the craftsman turning into an artist.
Ginger Hebel
Literal translation: A. Tauer.

The interview last Friday went excellent and I was lucky enough to be interviewed by a truly charming lady with lots of interest in perfumery. And I think she did quite some reading beforehand. Thus, I was very happy and the pictures that the photographer took of me, with my perfumes on my living table will hopefully turn out well, too. The sun was shining just perfectly through the window, the black stone table reflected the colours of the perfume bottles that I arranged together with some other bottles on the table. Thus, the photographer decided to do the pix there and not the real thing, the working space that you have seen in my last post….lucky me! And, of course, I am proud and rather euphoric. The article is about to appear on Thursday, about 130′000 homes get it in their letterbox (it is a free newspaper), and while jogging yesterday, Werni and me were thinking about how to catch this moment and move on from here:

First we figured out that on Thursday morning, he should join me using the public transport, to guard me from too aggressive fans begging for an interview.

Then we realized that I need a window seat in the tram (needs to be arranged beforehand), allowing me to salutate the people that we pass by. Probably, I will use a white cherkief, perfumed with lots of l’air du dĂ©sert marocain, waving it out of the window, like the Queen in London, but olfactory much more pleasing. (W. needs to figure out how to get rid of the window glass beforehand… a minor detail).

We also figured out that we need to inform the local TV for live coverage about my using the public transport. And eventually the police to make sure I am safe on my way downtown Zurich, where Pascal in his shop waits for the perfumer, to help him out pleasing the frenetic masses.

And then, the day after, on Friday, I will talk with my personal coach W. again, planning the next step which might be a thoughtful discussion with Larry King, or a nice chat with Ms Oprah W.
…..to be updated

What a week end! It was so intense that I could write for hours about it. There was the meeting on Saturday with Vero, my dear perfumery friend. We came accross quite a few interesting points when looking at some scents, including the lavender thing of mine. I will write about one of these issues, which is kind of a paradox, tomorrow. Then I was heavily engaged in threatening my neighbour’s cholesterol level by preparing my potatoe salad, like I do it every year once for our summer party. It is really heavy stuff, which might be one reason why I like it so much, based on a recipe I got from mom, with tons of mayonnaise and bakon.

It turned out that this year, we all could handle some calories more at our summer party, where we invite all neighbours living around us…. as soon as the fire was ready, after a delicious apero, sponsored by a new neighbour, it started to rain like hell. It was fun for the first minute. You had people singing for 30 seconds “I am dancing in the rain” but when our guests got really wet, it got kind of silent again. And I seriously worried about my salad, being diluted to something healthy and we moved everything to the restaurant nearby (the ” Alte Trotte”, regular readers of this blog know this place) where we were allowed to continue our party… Thus a line of 20 people grabed the salads, bread, meat, the gleaming grill, the wine and after half an hour we were ready again.

Sunday saw me cleaning up the soaking wet mess, and some jogging in the rain to get a clear head for my L’air du dĂ©sert endeavour. The rest of the day was more or less devoted to hand pour L’air du dĂ©sert bottles, and more bottles, and even more bottles. Pascal had a really great L’air du dĂ©sert week and sold the stuff like warm bread. He is happy and so am I. I can’t wait for this year’s x-mas season. Thus, while pouring and enjoying the waves of desert air surrounding me, I was thinking seriously about the packaging concept for the L’air and . More about this issue, which is important for me and which I discussed for hours now with Pascal will follow later…….and finally, after falling in some sort of desert air delirium, I figured out the menu for tonight: A dear friend from the Lonestar State is visiting us and I am curious to see her reaction on the Lonestar memories of mine.
Besides all this looking back: I will be absent Wednesday until Friday for business reasons.  Let’s see whether I find the time to blog. And: Please make sure to visit Columbina’s blog tomorrow. She will discuss the Orris scent, I have no clue what her critic is going to be like and I am really curious on her thoughts…..