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After a joyful evening with some heavy language, dead bodies all over, a fantastic DiCaprio! in “departed”, a glass of Shiraz and wonderful conversation, I realized how beautiful and peaceful life in a one-man company can be. No departed spies and counter-spies (both called rats) sneaking around me and my excels and mods. The only worries: Keep my firewall tight and my virus scan active and my mods limited to a countable number.
The postman will hopefully bring today or tomorrow the last ingredients for up-scaling and mixing the concentrate at day x, for a still undetermined numbers of bottles to launch at a still undetermined point of time in 2007. At least I think I know the final concentration (15%, eau de parfum strength): Testing a few concentrations from 8 to almost 20% I found 15% to be perfect to bring out the notes, with the right intensity and balanced appearance. I was pretty amazed on the differences and would not have expected such change in the overall appearance, especially of the head notes; I think with the chosen final concentration the green, fresh top notes come out best.
In a sense, there is some melancholy going with it, the day when finally the formula is carved into stone, being a moment of now-or-never; this is the moment when the musing about a green leave here and a woody stick there and a fresh lavender flower on top of it comes to an end:
Rêverie au jardin… be it…back to French names!

Greetings from the garden

Another wish for 2007 (besides the wish that things only get better now…): I wish I was a little bit more patient with what I do. This of course does not apply to my lavender-headnote fragrance….wish number 3: I want to launch this scent this year! Quick, quick!
Especially now, that it survived the heavy duty Zurich bar test. Contrary to what I planned I found myself in a bar yesterday, after a dear friend rang me, wishing to see me and talk about some melancholic issues like cleaning an apartment, moving out, etc. Thus, I figured out that some red wine will do good, with its anti-oxidants it cannot but support the healing process and  I put on the preferred mod, one spritz only and observed it in a real word environment.

… we are talking heavy smoke here. Not the post-2006 Italian bar where you sit in air that is clearer and cleaner than what the average ice bear gets these days. In Zurich, you can still smoke in bars and people do and I do not mind at all. My trial version survived the bar test easily…being present, smooth and vibrant, clean and clear. What followed next was the taxi test that ended fifty-fifty. Vanillin and some creamy wood coming from a cheap scented car freshener, applied daily in heavy doses, transformed the cab that brought me home into a gigantic vanilla bean roaring through Zurich. Here, the mod showed off with elegance, once isolated from the vanilla cloud.
I think, my mod performs nicely, for sure powerful enough. Of course, staying and diffusion power per se is not enough, but it is one factor….Today, respectively tonight, I want to test a few dilutions at different concentrations. More to follow for sure later….

This year’s November was breathtakingly wonderful. Warm like in early summer, sunny and colourful. Nevertheless, I decided about two, three weeks ago that it is time for my Mandarine tree to come home, into the house again, and wait there for next year’s spring.

Frequent readers of this blog may still remember the joy of my discovery of a single flower on this Mandarin tree about a year ago. Now, I must tell you: A miracle has happened, transforming my little Mandarin bush into a super-power like flowering tree. It is full with buds and flowers from the very top to the bottom, clouds of sweet scent are in the air, a mixture between the clear green softness of lily of the valley and jasmine’s sensuality, it is wonderful…but I have no clue what happened to the bush during the summer months. Is it a desperate trial to pass on its genes before the winter comes? We will see…story unfolding in a sense.
Another story unfolding is the Lavender fragrance. I still have my latest version. Some find it is finished and ask me not to change anything anymore. A few perfume lovers gave me feedback so far. I had to learn that Provencal Summer might be a nice name for the development phase, but as I never intended to create a scented picture of Southern France’s landscape, it is somewhat misleading.

I want to correct this expectation right away:
The fragrance is green, with a Lavender top note, a rose line, some spices, a musky, flowery resionous fir note with a hint of a tobacco line, a Frankincense airiness and woods in the background. Lavender is my picture of a fragrance built on Lavender sitting somewhere up in the hills of Southern France, but stretching far out into unknown landscapes and exotic forests, an airy and crisp, classy scent….
(pix: One of many mandarine tree flowers, seen in Zurich 2006)

Highlights this morning: Luca Turin in the NZZ Folio, ahhh Emeraude by Coty. What a fragrance! Luca Turin’s open letter is not online yet, but soon will on http://www.nzzfolio.ch/…
Before leaving home, early, jumping into thick white fog that poured somehow artifically over the streets like Santa Claus’ artificial white facial hair flows over his big belly, hohoho…it’s the season again, …well before leaving home, a quick sniff on the latest Lavender, undiluted still, hopefully without brown spots, brought a smile on my face.
A picture fitting with it might be green, very green indeed. Green as the phalaenopsis leaf seen this Sunday, after the weekly orchid showering, with little water pearls gleaming in the sun, focusing the light.
It is truly an interesting analogy. Look at the picture below, imagine it without the droplets: It would be boring, a picture of an orchid leave, overexposed, not revealing much, except the photographer’s inability to control his digital camera’s settings. Now, with the water pearls, bringing in a new structural element, points of attention in a sense, like little crystals, the same green leaf is transformed into much more, a focal point to start thinking about surface structure, surface tension and nature’s applied nanotechnology.
Droplets in Lavender might be: The musky ambrette seed and (a hint only, very effective with ambrette seed) patchouli, the ambra droplet by ambrein, the fir balm (reduced, yet even more effective than before) and some magic compounds more….

This weekend, here in Zurich, made me think about several issues. In light of summer-like temperatures it felt like there really is a truth, unconvenient and somewhat imminent, that is  shaping our future. Jumping from one temperature record to the next makes you wonder, as does the sound of falling stones in the mountains, that hasn’t even stopped in October (permafrost diminishing, stones are not fixed in the frozen ground anymore).
Thanks to sunny days, a wonderful rose has survived the autumn and was sending waves of a spicy, rich and sweet scent into Saturday’s warm sun. It seemed more intense than in summer. I wonder whether plants such as roses produce more scented molecules, different ones?, under harsh condition?
Talking molecules and truth: There was time to do some reading. I got my free copy of the September/October Adbusters’ edition; some of you might have read it already. I read Clayton Dach’s article with great joy, not because he cited part of our interview that should appear in Adbusters soon….
No, it was because Clayton dared to tell an unconvenient truth. For those interested in the discussions on perfumes, irration by perfumes or public acceptance: you may find his thoughts eye opening. (find out more about adbusters here)
Finally, there was my meeting with Vero, with Samsara …(!!!) and two lavender trials. One which was a somewhat rosy lavender with spicy notes, in the head and middle notes, slightly reminding in cinnamon. The second one, which resulted in some ahhhhh’s once landed under the nose of my tester W., is more herbaceous, with a fir line running from the first head note into the middle note (Balsam fir absolute!). A woody base, with some musky lines beforehand. I will probably go into more detail later, for the time being, Vero and I, we agreed on this one being better. We found the discreet rose without too much spices to match much better. It will now mature further; we agreed that this one does not seem to need to many changes anymore.

We will see….

(pix: The last rose as seen Saturday in the garden, scent: rich, spicy, sweet rose)

“I would wear it”, said my one and only every day available perfume tester “W.” yesterday evening, somewhen between the atomic bomb exploding behind the Ural and NY city saved in “Peacemaker” on TV.
“What do you mean”, I asked because I consider wearability a rather soft statement. Not entirely sufficient to make a perfumer smile. I want statements like “heavenly”, or “wow” or “Interesting”, with the last statement telling me I am onto to something with character. Like Jenny mentioned today on her perfumemaking blog “I want to make perfumes that trigger a reaction….”. I think the same (in brackets…I want to make perfumes that trigger a positive reaction).
“I think I wouldn’t change a lot anymore”, W. said while Mr. Peacemaker was beating the hell out of a bad Eastern European guy. “I think it is something nice and new”, he continued and Mr. Peacemaker called Ms. Peacemaker (you know, the classical scheme: Ms Super-intelligent and Mr. brave and handsome) to tell her that one bomb is still missing.
I have changed a lot in my Lavender trials in the last few days, still relying on the basic scheme, but adjusting things that don’t work. Without realising, the journey brought me to a somewhat special lavender theme. I trimmed things down. Reduced the complexity and what was a dark Caravaggio has turned into something…..expressionist?
Now, what to do? I don’t think it is finished. Not at all. I will for sure continue working on it. But at least we have something wearable, at least by W. standards. I have to ask again, once the final bomb is found, not exploded and all bad guys have left planet earth. “What do you mean …it is nice and new”, I asked and Ms. Peacemaker was falling in love to a happy, handsome, dirty soldier, who just rescued the world.

So, I worked on the lavendel thing again, experimenting with the absolute, the concrete and some essential oils that I have got from all over the world. I am always very reluctant to work with my concretes for entirely practical reasons.  

Concretes are rather waxy, due to the fact that these waxy plant components are very soluble in the aliphatic solvents used for the extraction process (like hexane). They are less soluble in alcohol, which results in precipitation respectively a non-dissolution of the waxy part of the concrete. When doing experiments which will later result in just  a few bottles : Easy! However, the filtration of lots of ethanol diluted concrete can become somewhat troubling. 

But, as always in life, there is another side to it. Concretes are wonderful to work with. They often are the closest you can get to the natural scent.

So, I figured out a while ago that working with the essential lavender oil will probably not bring me there where I want to be. Nor will the absolute do the trick. Why is this? Because the concrete brings in the best of the two worlds. A fresh green spicyness with a campherous woody line and a dark green flowery note with a sweet tenacious coumarin line. Well, then: Be it… So, I am trying something new, because… I am not pleased with anything I got so far.  More to follow for sure

Fragrant wishes! The nose is not free, yet. Thus, no scent adventures. But…. once the little smelling bud is there again I am curious to sniff my latest trial of the lavender scent. I constructed it based on my memories and on my last meeting with Vero. In this sniffing exchange meeting, we figured out the differences between my last versions and how what components influences what in which way.
Basically, I tried to build a new trial, bringing in what is good from two different sets. So far, I got a faint picture of this new trial, as the nose is really blocked. It is going to be truly exciting, as usually I do not follow my Excel formula in a strict sense, I tend to modify on the go, but not this time: No nose, no changes…..

I have a table that proofs the concept of ever increasing entropy (=mess) on a daily basis and every attempt to control the state of disorder there either fails or leads to an increasing disorder somewhere else.

Yesterday, five glass bottles joined the alu bottles and pipettes and stuff: I figured out it was time to bring in a somewhat different approach to my lavender trials. A different approach in the sense that the major story lines of the scent are prepared individually and then brought together, mixed to see where how things develop. So we are talking:
Woody amber, woody cedar, green lavender, rose, neroli and citrus-pine; or in a more complex way:
a1+a2+a3+…=A, b1+b2+b3…=B, …until f1+f2+f3….=F
And then:
xA+yB+zC+nD+mE+ oF + some more stuff= Fragrance mix.
A is a woody amber, B is a green lavender, C is a woody cedar line, D is a spicy, thyme enriched rose line, E is a flowery neroli mix, and F finally is a green citrus pine line.

Bottom line after a few hours: Very interesting. If everything fails….I can still go with my woody amber and the rose&thyme thing, that would be a dark rose…..hehehe. Trying to make one step aside, it looks as if the overall idea is ok. Outsiders might call it a “Tauer Thing”, because the ambergris mix turned out too dominant. The neroli helps together with the green stuff in the lavender itself to soothen the mix. And I can see how dangereous the methylpamplemousse turns out; I never realised this beforehand, but this guy needs to be controlled and a touch of Bergamot in the pine-citrus mix might solve this issue.

More bottles to follow.
Finally: For all my dear readers who are able to read Russian interviews….here is one for you: Andy Tauer interviewed by Sergej. You find my interview on the blog of Moon-fish, the interview was also published recently, I was told, in the Russian Magazin Cosmetic Market Today. Enjoy….

So there was time to work on the provencal summer, the fragrance which features lavender as one key theme, with this wonderful prototype name given by Prince Barry. A name that is promise on one hand and challenge on the other. A previous version was the starting point. Not the most previous version, though, as this latest rough sketch looked more like a provencal thunderstorm, too heavy and to rough (too much cistus), a hailstorm over a sultry summer heated sky.
So I worked on it and encountered a premix that I made a while ago, and I was amazed how good it is, I almost forgot about it. I labelled it Rose&Thyme, Version 2 (as it is the second trial). It features bulgarian rose, damascenone, lemongrass, thyme (red), Benzylsalicylate, Bay, and some more stuff I can not remember right now. And, blessed with my goldfish memory, it was a truly  exciting discovery again.
To have a goldfish memory has advantages, sometimes. You swim happily in your glass bowl and about every 5 min you start your tour again inside your bowl, discovering these great things around you once again. Thus, I rediscoverd this mix which is truly lovely. Not as a stand-alone perfume, but as a rose with a hint of thyme. It is so good, that one day (if I still remember back then) I might try to build a fragrance on it…..
Thus, I went back to this trial and used my rose and thyme, version 2, and wanted to make it greener in the start, add a kick more of a spicy pine note, increase the lavender, reduce the too dominant body note (dominated by okoumal). Well, I did so (Galbanum resinoid, more bergamot and grapefruit for the green touch, increasing the proportional amount of lavender, adding some fir cone essential oil, vetiverol enhancing the vetiverylacetat, increasing kephalis, reducing okoumal) and it took me quite a while (hours, to be specific) to come up with this trial , let us call it version 120806. It is in Excel now and waits to mature. Impatient as I am (comes as side effect with the goldfish memory…) I made a 15% dilution to aks for my favourite guinea pig’s expertise. And….W. likes it, with a “but”…He said, and he is getting better in it and more demanding; “Very good, but you need to round it off”. That’s the problem with guinea pigs after a while: They get better in dealing with the stuff you put on them and come up with comments that start to sound professional. Like…”hmmm, nice citrus, but a little bit too edgy”…or “oh…that smells like one you can buy”….
Unfortunately, my guinea pig is not that evolved yet, that he could tell me how exactly to round things off….

A self test this morning brought up a clear picture of….-somewhat nice, -needs maturation, -needs less myrrh, - needs more okoumal (just a hint more),- a touch ambergris might help, too and jasmin, to round things off. I will visit it tomorrow again, a goldfish hoping for new discoveries….