Wine, Sauce, and Perfume: My Olfactory Education

I pilfered my first glass of wine when I was seven. Parents and guests seemed to enjoy it so, and since it was forbidden, it was essential to try. I diligently cleared the table, taking away unfinished bottles to the kitchen, to be sipped and analyzed on the sly.

Years later, as part of a professional wine group, I drank many beautiful things—pre-war Burgundy comes to mind--now only obtainable by the ultra-rich. Other than training my nose, I recognized the subtle interplay between artist and nature--the careful taming of accident that brings about a new creation.

I went to France in 1975. There, after being blown away by a chicken with tarragon poached in cream, my destiny was sealed, and I became a cuisinier. I worked in the finest restaurants, ate in the finest restaurants (requiring most of my meager salary), and wrote about the finest restaurants.

After returning from France in 1979, and opening a French restaurant, I wrote a book, Sauces, that delves into the interplay of ingredients, which engenders something new and entirely original, much like a perfumery accord.

After gaining a basic understanding of technique it’s possible to create, often from very simple ingredients, sauce accords of extraordinary originality. Guests at my restaurant wanted the mysterious recipes when, in fact, I invented them, without thought, on the fly. The state of mindlessness that arose in such a fast-paced kitchen, where there was no time for the slightest rumination, left room for sudden and unpredictable discovery.

Whether these experiences will help me become a perfumer, I don’t know, but the creation of accords is very similar. So is the joy of discovering an entirely new aroma.

Most of all, I never stop being amazed at olfactory beauty--beauty sometimes so revealing and rich, that I’m left in tears.

Tectonic Shifts

Brooklyn Perfume Company released its first line of four eaux de parfum in 2014. The reception was enthusiastic. Several who reviewed the perfumes said they were “original.” One said “I’m at a loss for words” and declared there were two aphrodisiacs in his life: BPC’s Oud and the smell of his wife. Another found them “odd.” My 94-year old mother-in-law wears the musk. A friend, who swore he would never wear scent, puts a different one on each day. A friend’s wife hates them all.

Brooklyn Perfume Company’s Ambergris Perfume

Lately, I sent samples of these scents plus two new ones, Black Iris and Ambergris, to three important bloggers. One, again described the scents as original, and gave the oud a four out of five rating. From another one, someone took the time to write a full-page letter. The letter was devastating. The third blogger stopped communicating—emails not returned, nothing.

These are people whose opinion matters enormously, not only in determining Brooklyn Perfume Company’s future, but as critiques of my work. I am thinned-skinned.

While this has been difficult, it forces me to sit back and take another sniff.

I think I’m being objective, but then people come into my lab and say “Oh, it smells so good in here,” when I smell nothing. This “background smell” cannot help but influence how I perceive aroma.

The four original scents—Musk, Oud, Amber, and Sandalwood—are what they are. I’m not going to change them. But the new scents, my beautiful Black Iris, hated by all, and Ambergris, smelling like chemicals, must be reevaluated.

To learn, I smell others’ iris perfumes. While I have not found one that reminds me of orris, they all have top notes, some lovely, that pop out immediately. They pull you in. At the risk of sour grapes, I like none.

I shall continue my search for a convincing top note. For now, the heart and base seem ok.

Sandalwood III

Let’s say, right off the bat, that sandalwood can’t be replicated accurately. Perfumers have been trying for centuries and, now that the real oil has gotten so expensive, the effort has accelerated.

Not knowing better, making a viable sandalwood was my first effort at perfumery.

While years ago, I used mainly immortelle absolute and vetiver, things are now more complicated. But, sophistication aside, I still struggle at making an accurate sandalwood copy. While I probably will never be satisfied, I have composed a replica that’s much like the real thing.

Now we get heavily into synthetics.

I began with mysantol, a woody resin-like compound that’s soft and accessible, unlike some sandalwood chemicals that are difficult to smell because they quickly tire the nose. Mysantol also has a delightful green note, like that of the natural wood, that many sandalwood chemicals lack.

A Few Sandalwood Synthetics

At the risk of cheating, I added santalol. Santalol has the authentic aroma of sandalwood because it is distilled from the actual sandalwood heart wood. It is more expensive than even some sandalwoods, but more assertive. I could have stopped here, but, the cost at this stage, would have been too scary.

Next, I added sandela. I’ve got to smell sandela the first thing in the morning—it must be well diluted—before my nose goes blank and I can’t smell it anymore. It’s surprisingly sweet, with traces of something floral, and with notes of spices (cumin?) and ambergris. There’s something a little soapy. I put it in not only for its fragrance, but because it is very long lasting.

Mysore Wood (another synthetic) came next. Mysore Wood has a distinct creamy component that recalls the same milky facets found in real sandalwood.

I needed a long-lasting synthetic to match sandalwood’s long dry down.

There is more—much more—about sandalwood yet to come.

Will the Top Notes Behave?

It’s one thing to make a satisfying combination of top notes, but it is far trickier to coordinate them with the underlying facets in a perfume.

After working on a top-note combination of grapefruit and red peppercorn essential oil, I added aldehyde C-11 enic. for sparkle and edginess. Koavone and spices brought complexity. The top notes smelled good together. I was encouraged.

The next day, my carefully composed top-note combination just smells like grapefruit. I added more of the other stuff until the grapefruit receded.

Once I had this top-note accord, I added a small amount to the heart/base combination and was surprised that the top note aromas became subtler and integrated with the whole. The grapefruit gives a freshness to the opening, but is barely recognizable as grapefruit, the kind of effect I was looking for. The top notes have brought the heart and base more to the forefront. The top note accord gives the perfume vibrancy, freshness, and a new greenness.

Suddenly, a tiny citrus sparkle seemed like a good idea.

Lemon comes to mind, but lemon is unstable and I don’t like lemon chemicals like citral and limonene. I decided to use litsea cubeba, which smells strongly of lemon and is a tad cleaner somehow. The stuff is strong, so I worked with a 1% solution instead of the usual 10%. Two drops of this 1% solution to 10 drops of the remaining top-note mixture was about right. I added this to the base/heart complex, and it indeed provided a miniscule twinkle.

It seems I might be on to something.

Since the perfume and I need a break from one another (my nose is tired and the perfume needs to “marry”), the perfume now sits overnight. It will change and need more adjustment.  I’ll let it sit a week or so and readjust again. After a month, I’ll readjust one more time and let the perfume do what it’s going to do. Time usually makes perfume better, but one can never be sure that some pesky little note is going to stick it’s head out and ruin the whole thing.

Top Notes

Top notes—the most volatile and evanescent compounds in a perfume—give an immediate impression and help sell the product. Whether you like them or not, the top notes in today’s fragrances are incredibly smooth.

However, the top notes may not smell like the heart notes, which may cause disappointment once the customer gets the perfume home. To prevent this, I avoided most citrus for the Black Iris top notes and looked for substances that wouldn’t clash.

To create top notes that lead right into the beautiful heart after some seconds, not minutes, I started with an accord of pink pepper and grapefruit. Grapefruit is, of course, citrus, but it’s subtler than, say, lemon, and it forms an accord with the pink peppercorns that smells hardly of citrus at all. Pepper in a perfume acts almost as it does with food—it immediately heightens our perceptions and magnifies the flavors of the food.

The top note combo is great, but it still isn’t smooth like a modern perfume. I tried helvetolide, a musk that works in the top notes, and while it did smooth the surface, it was almost as though the perfume was coated with something foreign—like a layer of polyurethane—that muted its effect.

A trace of saffron gives a tiny spicy accent that livens up the entrance a little. I added a trace of Aldehyde C-11 enic which gives sparkle and sophistication.  

In another attempt to smooth things off, I added cabreuva oil which seemed to work. I tried coranol, which Boix Camps loves, but smells like every perfume out there. Koavone, on the other hand, gave the top-note-complex a touch of wood and smoothed it. I suspect it will help the head notes meld with the rest of the perfume.

Next, how to add my pretty top notes to the perfume without ruining everything.

Fixation II: The Big Bummer

Often when confronted with a new problem, I suddenly get sleepy. I thought this was a defense and just a way of procrastinating, until I realized that during a 15-minute nap, I get a lot of work done. I’ll often awake with solutions to problems or at least possible avenues for experimentation.

Why is this relevant? Because this afternoon, slumped over in my chair, I dreamed/thought about the new perfume when it struck me that I had been working with more concentrated tinctures than I had realized. I went over my notes and saw that I had marked everything as 10%--the usual concentration for my experiments when, in fact, several tinctures were 25%, a couple were 30%, one was 15%. The perfume that lasts so long is more concentrated than it’s supposed to be.

As I floated up toward wakefulness, it was clear that all the tinctures were going to have to be made the same concentration before they could make their way into my next perfume experiment.

So, I set to work, diluting or concentrating the various complexes and tinctures until they came out the same concentration as the most expensive finished perfume I can make without financial ruin.

A Few Blending Mixtures

Now that it’s down to a lower concentration, it doesn’t last long enough; it’s not strong enough.

While I’m back to thinking of fixatives I might use to get Black Iris to last longer, it’s important to remember that fixatives, if too strong or if used in excess, mute aromas and cause them to project less. This happened when I experimented with frankincense. It lasted forever but I could hardly smell the perfume.

What I need now is a substance that both helps the perfume project and gets it to last longer. For many years, perfumers perceived this as an inherent contradiction—it was one or the other. But, then, we must consider exaltants—compounds and naturals that cause a perfume to both project farther and last longer. 

Fixation

It’s frustrating to discover a fragrance, get all worked up about it, put it on the skin, and have it disappear in 20 minutes. Perfumers describe this phenomenon as caused by a lack of “fixation,” the idea being that certain ingredients— “fixatives” --“fix” the perfume and get it to last longer. Typically, resins, woods, or persistent molecules, most fixatives have high boiling points and evaporate slowly. The accepted wisdom is that fixatives combine with the rest of the perfume and slow its volatilization.

Ambergris is an Excellent Fixative

While this is partially true, the fixatives often persist, but nothing else. Sometimes fixatives fail to restrain other, more volatile, ingredients, causing the perfume to shift from whatever prevails in the beginning (top and middle notes), to the aroma of the fixatives alone. In the 1950s, my mother often came home late from parties, wreaking of natural musk, the other aromas in her Vol de Nuit, long gone.  

There is certainly no inherent problem with a perfume shifting character from the beginning to the end, provided it is pleasant during its entire duration. However, it seems to me that if a perfume promises something, say rose or tuberose, it should smell that way through most of its duration. On the other hand, a perfume with a fanciful but ultimately meaningless name that’s more about a fantasy—“Opium,” say--we may be delighted to witness it go through its changes.

So, where does this leave Black Iris? I might be in a pinch. I’m promising iris and if the stuff doesn’t smell like iris the whole time, then it’s no longer iris. But what if the public doesn’t know what iris, much less black iris, smells like?

Soon, more about the difference between an iris and a black iris.

For some perfumes, the greatest challenge is getting them to last. Natural floral aromas, especially, evaporate quickly—no more than an hour or two on the skin—and need to last longer to be viable.

It has long been the supposition of perfumers, master and otherwise, that by combining a rapidly evaporating substance with a slowly evaporating one that the evaporation rate of the quickly evaporating compound is slowed down. With this in mind, heavy, thick and viscous substances are added to perfumes. Such substances as benzoin, musks, oppoponax, sandalwood and a myriad of others retard the evaporation of top and middle notes. Overdoing it—adding too much of a viscous substance—will flatten the perfume and create too much restraint.

Another approach is to recreate the perfume using heavier notes such that there’s a backup perfume profile to take over when the first evaporates. In other words, say you add oxyoctaline formate. Because this compound is persistent, it will remain in the dry down and give the impression that the perfume is long-lasting, when in reality the first part of the perfume—that part from which it finds its identity—will have evaporated.

When I was investigating other iris perfumes when I was working on Black Iris, which turned into Green Iris, I found a number of perfumes that started out with a strong iris accord, but ended, hours later, smelling like something else entirely.

Perhaps the most famous fixative of all, is ambergris, confusingly referred to as “amber.” A small amount of tincture added to a perfume gives a life-likeness and vibrancy that otherwise would be missing. I’ve noticed how after a few weeks from blending it seemed to make perfumes blossom. Few perfumers use ambergris anymore which is strange since, while expensive, it is a lot cheaper than other things we still use. Substitutes such as ambroxan, ambrinol, ambercore, and andrane are typically used to provide this essential “amber” note. These are long-lasting compounds and, like ambergris, help fix the perfume.

While I want to remain true to iris and replicate its lovely rooty, earthy, and floral aroma, I haven’t just promised iris, I’ve promised black iris. Since few people know what iris roots smell like and far fewer, if any, know the aroma of black iris, I’m allowed a bit of fantasy.

Instead of getting the black and the iris to function together, I’ve decided to get them to present at different times during the dry-down. In other words, the perfume will start out like iris and get darker and blacker in tone as the iris fades and my faux natural musk moves to the forefront. The iris will go from purple to black. It worked as predicted, without the musk fixating the rest of the fragrance. The musk does persist, undetectable during the first whiffs of the iris, gradually revealing itself as time goes on. While the approach worked, I still wanted the iris aspects to last longer.

I may have made a helpful discovery. Older perfume formulas often call for concretes. A concrete is an extract, usually a solid, and an interim product when making an absolute. Typically, concretes contain large amounts of waxes and other high-boiling-point materials, so the obvious thing was to track down some concrete made out of iris. This was not easy as few people use concretes and they’re rarely sold. After my tiny sample of iris concrete arrived in the mail, I added some to the formula and it worked like a charm. The perfume smells great, projects reasonably well, and, most of all, lasts for hours on the skin. There is only one problem: iris concrete is expensive. Have I made the perfume exorbitant? Whether people will pay for this loveliness, I don’t know.

Black Iris Developments

Several years ago, I took a Photoshop workshop. The instructor told us not to work endlessly on an image, searching for perfection, but rather, to make a series of trials and finish by comparing them and, perhaps, combining them.

Following suite, I’ve taken the same tinctures and compounds I used to make Black Iris, and started from scratch without looking at my notes. Something new has evolved.

I left out the coumarin, because I thought the perfume was too soft when I wanted something leaner and greener.

Ambergris is an Essential Element in Black Iris

I reworked the wood base complex. I wanted a forceful sandalwood note, so I used a combination of santalol (which is expensive and hard to find), siamwood, pistachio oil, exaltone, oud, javanol, kephalis, and ambergris. This is the best sandalwood reproduction I’ve managed yet—it smells like sandalwood, but it is more powerful.

Next, I attacked the root mixture. I started with the central accord between orris (iris root) and heliotropin, but then cut the heliotropin a bit to reinforce the root-like quality and pull away from heliotropin’s floral fruitiness. (It’s often compared to the smell of cherry pie.) I added carrot seed and angelica seed to further enhance the orris. The angelica seed also contributed a green note.

I added sandalwood to smooth things off and worked on the violet accord using methyl ionone and dihydro ionone beta. Dihydro ionone beta is one of my favorites because it links violet with wood.

I added vetiver and vetiveryl acetate, again to reinforce the roots and contribute green. For further green, came a drop of nonadienal. That did the trick.

This was all going great guns until I realized the composition has no tenacity. I worked in opoponax, which helped ground everything and make the fragrance last longer. More oak moss would have been great, but it’s so highly restricted now that I can hardly use enough to make a difference. Other moss-like compounds exist, but I haven’t tried them.

I shall continue working on longevity.

The perfume smelled fresh, alive, and of orris, but it needed a top note.

Many perfumers add linalool (think of the smell of hand wipes), but I added linalyl acetate, which adds another angle. I included a trace of rosewood, a natural source of linalool. This combination gave the perfume lift, but the perfume still needed a top note. I added a good amount of ambergris; aldehyde C-11-enic contributed a nervous edge, but I still needed something vibrant, not citrus, to pull people in. I tried a good chamomile, but reconsidered when it made the perfume too piney. After adding a carefully-balanced combination of black and pink peppercorns, a lively top note came into place. It didn’t cover up the orris. It was evanescent and evaporated almost immediately.

I invited friends over to smell my new creation. Expecting raves, everyone instead agreed that the perfume was too floral, too “girly.” It was too young and innocent. To counteract this, I added a tiny bit of nonadienal. Nonadienal is ridiculously powerful and very green. This immediately gave the perfume what I might call “spine.” It was still fresh and lively, but had a new dignity. My synesthetic colleague Kate gave it a sniff as I looked on anxiously. Clearly, not satisfied, she proclaimed, “It needs earth—like dirt.” I knew there were obscure chemicals that smelled like dirt, but I didn’t know what they were. I brought out any kind of loamy or forest floor naturals I could think of. When she smelled my selections—oakmoss and labdanum were a few--she was clear: opopanax. In it went and, indeed, it gave the perfume a new fullness. Not only was the perfume “rooty,” but “rooted,” more grounded, with more gravitas. When warily I asked Kate to give the concoction a sniff, she no longer saw purple.

My perfume, while brown in the bottle, had become black.

Exaltation: Odors and Odor Effects

The Odor Effects Diagram

So-called exaltants amplify other smells. Truffles do this by enhancing the flavors around them--an egg cooked with truffles tastes more like an egg. The same thing happens with mature ambergris tincture when it amplifies the smell of the finished perfume; it gives life and vitality to almost any blend. Civet makes flowers smell more like flowers and castoreum gives erogenic gravitas. While most synthetic musks are considered narcotic, natural musk has a strong erogenic component and an ammonia-like element. It improves almost anything.

My favorite perfume author, Paul Jellinek, created what he calls the Odor Effects Diagram, which demonstrates the effects of aromas, rather than odors such as woody or floral.

Notice on the Odor Effects Diagram that exalting aromas exist along the line between so-called stimulating smells and erogenic smells. Stimulating smells are resins, woods, and spices. As the line of exaltants approaches the erogenic pole, the smells get funky and animalic. Components with these characteristics are said to “exalt” the perfume by amplifying it.

Above all, it’s imperative to have contrasts, not necessarily contrasts of odors, but contrasts of odor effects.

Odors and odor effects are often confused. As Jellinek mentions, citral, vanillin and vetiver all have the same stimulating odor effect, but very different odors. The reverse is also sometimes true. Geraniol, phenyl acetaldehyde, and para-cresyl acetate are all considered floral aromas, but their odor effects are different. Geraniol is narcotic, phenyl acetaldehyde is stimulating, and para-cresyl acetate is erogenous.

Any classical French perfume should produce all four major odor effects—anti-erogenic, stimulating, erogenic, and narcotic. This creates powerful contrasts within the perfume that attenuate or amplify the ingredients.

Some special ingredients contain the necessary elements within themselves. Without these indispensable ingredients, perfumery as we know it would not exist. More about them coming up.

Iris Research

I want to see how Serge Lutens solves the problems of longevity and projection in his fabulous perfume, Iris Silver Mist.

The opening iris accord is much like mine and, like mine, evaporates sooner than I, and apparently he, would like. Lutens creates another series of accords that kick in once the orris accord wears off, leaving us with a floral perfume, but one, that, unfortunately, no longer smells of iris. I’m trying a similar approach, but with woods and sandalwood in the drydown instead of flowers. Since sandalwood alone would break me, I’m planning on using my sandalwood accord and combining it with plenty of the real stuff before adding it to the iris blend.

To accomplish this, I’m going to continue to rely mostly on synthetics. My main source of information about synthetics, a book I want to explore more in depth in another post, has been Perfumery: Techniques in Evolution, 2nd Edition, which came out in 2009. The book is quite expensive, but it’s a helpful compendium of articles and interviews written or recorded by or about Acadi Boix Camps in 1978, 1985, 1999, and 2004.

Since the whole list of the ingredients in my sandalwood is rather long, I’ll give some highlights.

I included Javanol, which is very long lasting and will help prolong the drydown. Iso e super contributes an almost violet (methyl ionone) note which will help link the woods with the iris accord. Bicyclononalactone adds creaminess. At one point, when the accord got too soft, I lowered this. Pistachio CO2 adds a nutty quality while oud adds a note of precious wood. Damescenone smooths the mixture and lends a subtle fruitiness. Patchouli lends depth and background. A little Cedar Atlas contributes its woody tone. Vetiver and Vetiveryl Acetate give a needed tang; they also increase longevity.

Next, we combine the accord with the main Black Iris accord.