Pentachords Winner

...is IRINA!


Irina, send me your postal details at Olfactarama at att dot net.


The winner was chosen using random.org.


Congratulations to Irina and thanks to all the other entrants.


Back tomorrow with a real post!




(photo from Google Images. Original source, Carroll College "Student Life" catalog.)

Winners of ZETA samples from Tauer Perfumes

The winners of the three ZETA samples (chosen using random.org) from Tauer Perfumes are:

Alicia at cleis
oloiuqui
flavourfanatic

Please get in touch with me at olfractarama at att dot net with your postal addresses and I'll get these out to you double quick!

(Normally there would be a post here; however, my MAC's hard drive fried yesterday and it's in the shop; back next week with a regular entry.)

Congratulations winners, and thanks to Andy Tauer!

Outlaw Perfumes: Drawing Winner!

And the winner of "Belle Star" by Artemisia Perfumes is:


Absinthe Dragonfly!


Administrative Details:


Winner chosen, as always, using Random.org.

Absinthe Dragonfly, please get in touch with me at

olfactarama at att dot net, and I'll forward your postal

details to Artemisia Perfumes.

Thanks for entering, everybody, and thanks for reading!

I'll announce the winners for my other drawing, for the Atelier Perfumes postcard and sample set, on Wednesday, Nov. 24th and again on Friday, Nov. 25th. (Psssst...it's not too late to enter that one; just refer to my post from 11/12 "Special Edition: The Atelier Postcards" and leave a comment there, by 9 a.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time tomorrow, Nov. 24th.)


It's Thanksgiving week here in the U.S., so I'll be back next Tuesday with a full post about a classic, vintage perfume.

Cheerio -- Olfacta

Speaking Bespoke in Atlanta

A month or so ago, a friend and I were talking about perfume at the gym. A petite blonde standing nearby overheard us, came up and introduced herself as a perfumer, specializing in custom blends.

I don’t think of my city as particularly perfume-conscious. That is surprising, as the American South is so linked with images of belles in hoop skirts with their gentleman callers, but the fact is that at least half the people here are from somewhere else, and the natives tend to be low-key about what they wear, whether that be clothing, shoes or scent (TV’s “Real Housewives of Atlanta” notwithstanding).

So I went to see the perfumer, Susan, at her studio last week. Her company, Blend Custom Parfum Studio, does bespoke perfumes for individuals, bridal parties -- imagine having your own bride’s blend! -- couples, gifts, and so on. This was my first sight of a real perfume organ, and I thought “I could easily live here.” 

Susan trained for this profession in Grasse, at Galimar, one of the oldest perfumeries. She took me through the process of creating a custom fragrance by making me a sample of my own. 

 In creating a perfume for someone, the perfumer must be able to size up the client quickly. Sometimes, there are surprises, she explained -- like a hard-driving career woman who comes in asking for a come-hither oriental as a signature scent. It’s a delicate process. “Scent tells the truth,” she said; very succinct. And very accurate.

If you were to make a list of all the perfumes you loved most when in middle and high school, often there will be enough similarities between them to identify your fragrance “family.” Mine turned out to be Chypre, so that’s where we started. Susan uses an interesting proprietary system, designed by Galimar, in which the client sniffs from a collection of fourteen essences, eliminating them one by one until a favorite appears (three of them, in my case, as I simply can’t be monogamous when it comes to fragrance). Anyway, she explained as we talked that, for most people, perfume is about an individual style, the creation of an image, your persona.

We talked a bit about the modern fragrance “climate” -- the big-business, overwhelming  celebrity scents and the modern no-perfume movement, which I believe are linked, as she worked. She’d hand me bottles of blends and essences to evaluate, combining them on scent strips for me to try. Her Grasse training emphasizes the base notes, which I thought was interesting, especially in comparison to the way mainstream scents are sold now, like everything else, instant. Five seconds, a quick sniff from a card, no time (or need) for the scent to develop; what you smell is what you get. What she does is very different. 

I’m wondering if we perfume devotees, with our large collections, are really looking for that sense of identity in a bottle.

 If I read about the newest Parfumerie Generale or Amouge and immediately start examining the “notes,” what am I really doing? For example, I don’t particularly like lily for my own wearing, and, even though I can tell a great lily-based scent from a thoughtless knockoff, I wouldn’t choose to wear it. It’s easy enough to say “I don’t like it, that’s all” but what does that really mean? Does it mean I had a bad encounter with a bouquet of Stargazers as a child, or what? Conversely, if I adore the earthy essence of iris root, what might be the source of that feeling? Good memories, perhaps, of planting bulbs with a mother, or grandmother, long ago? This, I think, is what custom perfuming is really all about; the winnowing and choosing and winnowing and choosing until you arrive at...you. The uniqueness of your own life’s experience.

So I’m smelling a bit of my custom blend, an EDP, right now. Perfume takes about two weeks to fully “meld,” Susan explained, but I’m in that vial even now. Here's the Chypre quality I love, with smooth, greenish heart notes, but, more important, I’m thinking “I could wear this anywhere.” To the office or gym or theatre, to places I’d usually think twice about wearing fragrance at all, because this one seems to be emanating from my own skin, as natural as breath.

As the fragrance industry splits like an amoeba between the mainstream/celeb and the niche/exclusive -- it seems that there is more of a divide between them than ever before -- perhaps this kind of perfumery will step forward.

 In the never-ending battle of Art vs. Commerce, this is the Art part.

The photo is of Susan Sexton, perfumer.

If you leave a comment here, you'll be eligible for the drawing for Roberto Cavalli "Oro," deadline October 12, midnight U.S. Eastern Daylight time. See last week's post for details.

Sacred Earth, Infinite Sky

This Thursday, August 12, midnight US Eastern Daylight Time, is the deadline for entering the drawing for 3 mls of “Agent Provocateur.” If you haven’t already commented, leave a comment here and you’ll be entered. I’ll post the name of the winner by 11 a.m. Thursday morning.

I have always loved Rosine’s Rose Kashmire. To me, it is the essence of a bohemian oriental floral; lush and opulent, bringing to my mind long hair and scarves, and skirts made of bright Indian cottons and silks, but is it really as exotic as all that?

This kind of thing brings out the the experimenter in me. I had heard about Tigerflag Attars on Perfume Posse back in June. I hadn’t delved into attars before, partly because of their expense. But this importer offered samples for a very reasonable price. My interest in exotic ingredients had been piqued by the natural perfumes I sampled for the Mystery of Musk event, so I began to peruse the online catalog.

Right away, I noticed something I have never heard of before, and, yes, found the concept a little hair-raising: “Mitti,” distilled dried mud from the Ganges riverbed.

Now that’s interesting. Distilled sacred dirt. Haven’t seen that one before.

I continued on down the list: Saffron Mitti Shamama. Saffron, the cultivation, harvest and trade of which paints a portrait of human history. Mitti, a rather -- oh, go ahead, admit it -- scary idea to a westerner such as myself.  Shamama, a mysterious mixture of unnamed plants, spices and woods.

The proprietor was kind enough to send sample strips of many of the essences he sells and, believe me, a sample strip of any attar, placed upright, is enough to scent your nightstand for days. One was for a pure Mitti attar. What a surprise --  it’s a lovely scent, rich, earthy, and slightly floral. The Saffron Mitti Shamama is all that, plus whatever is in the Shamama mixture, plus the bitter, medicinal saffron. I can’t remember ever having smelled anything like this. It’s dark, not sweet, slightly vegetal, as different a perfume concept as anything could possibly be to a Westerner. Come-hither has nothing to do with this.

When layered with rose attar, from the same vendor, it becomes more what we think of as a perfume, an accord. The rose sweetens the bitter saffron, and it all mixes with the mitti and the shamama to create something half-remembered, half-familiar; the world of perfumery is so much richer, more diverse, than I ever knew.

The Rose Kashmire holds its own, though. There is something truly uplifting about this scent. A quick look at the ingredients reveals many of the ingredients we’d expect to find in a modern fragrance, but one of the base notes caught my eye: “Grass from Nagar Motha.” That’s the Hindi name for a type of sedge, grown in several provinces in India. (In the West it’s called Cypriol.) It has been used as a folk medicine to treat a wide variety of ailments, and, like patchouli, to scent the clothing of Indian women.

Saffron links these two. In the Rose Kashmire, it makes what could be just one more rose-vanilla-amber scent different, heady, expansive, special. There is also a base note of camphor, which appears from time to time; the Nagar Motha? My research into this essence reveals that cypriol often has a camphor note. I’m wondering if that is present in the shamama mixture, too. I wouldn’t be surprised.

The Rose Kashmire excites and lifts the mood. The Saffron Mitti Shamama soothes and induces a slight meditative state, in me anyway. I wonder how they’d layer? How they’d be, mixed? This deserves much research. As do other attars and shamamas.

Much.




Full disclosure: I paid for the samples. The scent strips were free.


I’ve mixed the attars I received in with jojoba oil in a 5:1 ratio. I’ve also experimented with using perfumer’s alcohol to rinse the vials, for a strength probably around that of an EDT. The oil is better. It just is. The regions that use attars use them in oil bases.


Notes for the Rose Kashmire, from Le Parfums de Rosine’s website, include Saffron, Bulgarian rose oil, Coriander, Sicilian bergamot;  Chinese peonies, Absolute rose of Damascus, Resin of Myrrh; Grass from Nagar Motha, Vanilla, Vetiver, Sandalwood, Gum Benzoin, Ambre Gris. Perfumer: Francois Robert.


For a comprehensive look at the history of saffron and how it relates to perfumery, visit Perfume Shrine’s Saffron Series.


Photo by J. Horning, © 2000 - 2010 Dreamstime, all rights reserved

Back in Business, sort of

Don't forget to enter the drawing for a sample of Krizia's "Teatro Alla Scala" which ends at midnight, Monday Jan 18th, US Eastern Time!

Thanks to all of you who sent me “get well soon” wishes! I’ve made some wonderful new friends here.

I can now type, but only in short bursts so...hello, random!

Has anyone seen the new show “Men of a Certain Age?” It’s on TNT, on Monday night. Remember Andre Braugher, Lt. Pemberton from “Homicide: Life on the Street?” He plays the oldest of three pals, all well over 40, all facing the diminishing returns of middle age. The other two are Ray Romano (“Everybody Loves Raymond”) and Scott Bakula (“Boston Legal” and a hundred other things).

Men have gotten a bad rap about a lot of things in the last 40 years or so. Enough preaching. Watch the show. It’s beautifully written and painfully real.

More TV news (can you tell what I’ve been doing while immobilized?) Anthony Bourdain is back with another season of “No Reservations.” I had serious reservations about last season. If last night’s show on Panama is any indication, welcome back Tony!

Alright already, perfume. I finally got around to trying Le Labo’s “Patchouli 24,” with a new method of sampling: take the whole vial, empty into hand, apply to neck, wrists and chest and wear all day. Take occasional notes. Here they are:

“Patchouli 24 by Le Labo It’s true! Smoke and leather and a little, tiny bit of patch. Put on around 10:25 am, about 1 1/2 mls. 2:45 pm - smokiness only. 5:30 pm - ash. (How do they do that?) Ends with smoke and a little vanilla. I’d love this on a man. A real good fragrance, for a guy.”

Which is another way of saying not everything is for everybody.

Interesting how my blog hit counter breaks down Olfactarama readership by operating system, and around 50% of you use a MAC, which is much higher than the general population. When I first made the switch to MAC, I wasn’t happy. I didn’t have time for geekery. I just needed to get stuff done.

Now, having read and implemented the content of “Mac OS X Snow Leopard -- The Missing Manual” I can say that I had no idea what I was doing. This is a fab-u-lous operating system. And, believe it or not, some of us still need a book to help us fully utilize its capabilities. This one is by New York Times computer columnist David Pogue, and the ISBN is ISBN-13: 978-0-596-15328-1.

OMG! Is this beginning to sound like advertising! It is! But let me assure you: no media company is paying me and no perfume or publishing company is sending me any freebies! This silly issue has apparently raised its ugly head, again.

Here’s the scoop: so far, only one small and one very small perfume company have sent me so much as a 1 ml. vial of anything. We bloggers still get our product the old-fashioned way. We send it to our friends. Then they send things to us. If all else fails, we pay for our itsy-bitsy samples, just like everybody else...

I mean, have you tried to get a free sample out of any SA lately? I hear they still give them out in New York. But here? No way.

The world of schwag is much smaller now. When I worked in music all those years ago, I needed a moving crew to carry it all out to the car. Now? Fuggetaboutit. The bean-counters, the ink still drying on their MBA’s, have figured out yet another way to Keep Tabs.

Mmmmm....My Sin. I got some of the real perfume the other day. Wore it all day. What is in this stuff! It’s a dark aldehydic floral, mixed so well it resists deconstruction, other than to whisper “Lush” and “This is what Joan Holloway on Mad Men would wear” and “Why in the world did Lanvin ever discontinue this?!”

And...on a final note...speaking of Joan Holloway, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a man, any, um, straight man, with whom I’ve ever discussed “Mad Men,” who didn’t say in some way or another that he’d really like to, well, you know, know her.

And still the twenty-somethings continue to starve themselves.

Why?

Photo copyright ArieLiona, used under license from Dreamstime.com.

"Men of a Certain Age" is on TNT (basic cable) at 10 pm on Monday night (on the US East Coast, anyway).

"No Reservations" starring Anthony Bourdain is on The Travel Channel (basic cable) at 9 pm on Monday night, also East Coast time.

No freebies were accepted for the writing of this post.

Notes for Le Labo's Patchouli 24 EDP, concocted by Annick Menardo, include birch, styrax, patchouli and vanilla.

Out of Service

I have sprained my shoulder and, unlike many veterans of the Web I never learned to type with one hand.

Back soon, in a couple of days I hope! (In the meantime don't forget to enter the sample drawing -- see last week's post!)

Utterly Charming Perfume Cartoon

Reminder: the deadline for the vintage Mitsouko sample, etc., is this Wednesday, August 12, at midnight US EDT! Leave a comment to enter!

In the meantime....

Click here for a great 1925 cartoon on how to use perfume! (Sorry, couldn't get it to resize properly -- click the link and then the cartoon so you can read it.)

Cold Sweat

Remember: the sample drawing for the vintage Mitsouko ends midnight US EDT, Aug 12! Leave a comment to enter.



The pheromone debate rages on, with one large consumer-products company manufacturing soap supposedly laden with the li’l devils. (Read all about it here.) Now, truth be told, I’m not so sure I’d want to walk around exuding subliminal signals that say, “C’mere, stranger!” but the MBA’s who develop these products seem to think I would, and you would, so there ya go: the geniuses of American business are at it again!

A couple of things: it’s not at all certain that human pheromones even exist. Animals have a special organ which perceives them; if you’ve ever seen a cat lift its head, open its mouth slightly, draw its lips back and mouth-breathe the air with a vacant expression, you’ve seen it -- the pheromone-detecting organ (VNO) at work. Some researchers think we have them. Others say we don’t. Others think we might, but vestigial, like the appendix.

Sweat, until recently, was just thought to be well, sweat. But there are different kinds of sweat. There is exertion sweat, and emotion sweat. Here’s the best part; the nose can’t tell them apart, if they’re fresh, but the brain can.

In 2009 a team of researchers, funded mostly by the military (are you surprised?) published a quite comprehensive study about the subliminal perception of fear-sweat. They looked at eighty presumably sane people who had signed up for sky-diving lessons. Somehow, the research team convinced these subjects to shave their armpits, control their diet prior to the study, and wear collection devices before, during and immediately after their first jump, done in tandem so they wouldn’t have to move (exert themselves) much, thereby reducing exertion sweat.

The collected apocrine sweat, analyzed by gas chronograph, showed significant amounts of androstadienones and androstenones, compounds reputed to be involved with human reproduction. Aha!

The jumpers and their sweat were put through every imaginable test to rule out what in research is called the “confounding variable.” (If you would like to read the original paper, do so here.) The gist of the research was this: the subjects -- those smelling the collected sweat -- were tested inside a Functional MRI, which “looks” at an active brain in real time, using magnetic imaging. If the methodology is good, and this was, it is the purest, most accurate way to determine what is really going on in the brain and reach the most accurate conclusion.

The areas that lit up in these subjects were in the left brain, specifically in the left corticoid amygdala. The amygdala is a referee of sensory signals and emotional reactions. It modulates, coordinates and ultimately delegates. It is one of the most crucial brain structures, as it links the “old” (primitive) brain with the “new” (cortex) thinking/interpreting one.

The research team then came up with an interesting way to look at how this innocuous substance (remember, the subjects couldn’t smell “sweat” consciously) might affect fear perception in the smeller. They took a series of morphed images of facial expression, which ranged from neutral to ambiguous to fearful, and showed them to the subjects which had or had not been smelling the fear-sweat from the jumpers. The subjects who had been showed significantly sharpened perception; in other words, you might say their vigilance was heightened. What this means is that their brains were put on alert, even though the smellers were not consciously aware of that.

This kind of thing has obvious applications for all kinds of interesting investigation, especially for the military. They also say that more research is needed, as they’d like to look at this kind of brain arousal in conjunction with other kinds of facial expression.

If you really wanted to stretch, I suppose you could call these sweat substances -- androstadienones and andostenones -- “pheromones,” but these researchers don’t. There is another study, not nearly as comprehensive (or as well-funded, I’d guess) as this, which concludes that women can tell the difference between sweat from sexually aroused males and those who are not. Now, if somebody could come up with a way to isolate those same compounds from females, then they’d have something! Can you imagine the big perfume manufacturers just falling all over themselves to get at it?

Back to the soap company. The “pheromones” they supposedly isolated came from good ol’ garden-variety sweat, apparently. Not the sweat of terrified skydivers or aroused males. Research this good is, apparently, hard to find.

But not that hard.




The original article, “Chemosensory Cues to Conspecific Emotional Stress Activate Amygdala in Humans” was published in 2009. Copyright 2009 Mujica-Parodi, L.R. et al including Strey HH, Frederick B, Savoy R, Cox D, et.al, used under open-access status, Creative Commons Attribution License.

Photo copyright Drazen Vukelic, Dreamstime.com,used under license

What does an elephant smell like?

Sometimes I come across scents that make me wonder.

“Breath of God” is one such fragrance. Anything that gets a five-star review from Tania Sanchez gets my attention; this one did. Even without the five stars it still would have, simply because of the over-the-top-ness of the name.

I got a sample in a swap, eagerly ripped off the tape and sprayed it on the back of my hand. I thought, immediately, WTF? Gasoline and sticky candy? And then I thought, “Breath of Dog.”

It just came to me. The scent smells nothing like the breath of a dog, of course. The opening is actually a nose-tickling vetiver and something really, really sweet, and it’s so volatile that there’s a bitter residue on my lips after sniffing it.

Most of the time, when I smell scents either made for the Japanese market or by companies in Japan, they’re tooth-decaying, diabetes-inducing sweet. Far be it from me to even attempt to analyze modern Japanese culture, but this makes me wonder. I’m thinking that this scent, if it is not already targeted to that culture, really should be.

Tania Sanchez says in the winter ’08 Guide newsletter that Breath of God has the “sweet biological rot of compost below and dry air touched with woodsmoke above.” (Let’s call that one “Breath of Bog.”) Wow. If it smelled like that, I’d probably buy a bottle! “Surreal combinations,” she also says. That’s more like it.

I wonder sometimes if any of us are smelling what the others are.

Remember the legend about the eight blind men and the elephant? One grabs the trunk. “An elephant,” he pronounces, “is like a snake.” Another feels the elephant’s leg and declares, “No, an elephant is like a tree.” And so on.

More than anything, I detect in “Breath of God” a shrill note of God-knows-what.

But if you are patient, and I mean very very patient, you will be rewarded with a lovely dry-down, close to the skin, a little floral, a little musky, a little grassy, like a hundred other scents. Is it worth the wait? IMHO, no. So what do I know? I’m still a noob, it seems.

Sometimes, though, I think we get caught up in the rush toward fragrance-as-art, because, as I’ve mentioned here before, perfume as art doesn’t get a lot of respect, at least not yet. You’ll hear in, say, November that some Lutens or Malle or some niche strangeness is IT, and rush to buy or sample it and two months later see that it’s being written about as “mushroom compost mixed with Vicks Vap-O-Rub.”

So it could easily be that Sanchez is at a level of connoisseurship I haven’t approached yet, not even come near, may never. Or it could be that the elephant is very like a tree.

At any rate, is it that I don’t like “Breath of God,” or don’t understand “Breath of God” yet?

Have any of you had similar experiences? As when an esteemed critic loves something and you’re left scratching your head and wondering, hunh?

Something tells me I’m not the only one.

Tell me by Wednesday, May 6th, Midnight US EDT, and I will do a drawing, and send one of you a 1 ml (roughly) sample of “Breath of God” so you can decide for yourself.





“Breath of God” is made by “B Never Too Busy To Be Beautiful.” The perfumer is Simon Constantine.


I have no idea what “Breath of God’s” notes are, other than vetiver. Do you? If so, please tell me in your comment!

An administrative detail: before my old junker laptop crashed a couple of weeks ago, I had a “blind copy” mailing list with the names of a number of other bloggers and perfume people on it. I lost it. If you’d like to be notified by e-mail when there’s a new post on “Olfactarama,” please send me a note at pborow at comcast dot net and I’ll recreate one.

Three for spring that won't break the bank (and a drawing!)

Spring? Huh, you say? Spring? It’s snowing/raining/flooding/freezing. But don’t fear, my pretties, it will come. Trust me on this.


I’ve been shopping. Stocking up on all those “Eaus” our usually hot springs and miserable Georgia summers demand. In big bottles, too. Here’s what I’m thinking: once the Burghers of Brussels are successful in removing any ingredient that might cause a rash in one of ten thousand of us, such as hydroxycitronell (are they joking? Hydroxycitronell?!) as well as oakmoss and who knows what else, many of our beloved summer scents are going to smell like a melting popsicle and probably last about as long. So I’m hitting the online discounters for (I hope) their older stock in full bottles. Some of these are surprisingly inexpensive. Here are a few:

O de Lancôme: suggested by Helg from Perfume Shrine. I asked on Perfume Posse if anyone knew of a citrus that might last. After the laughing stopped, Helg suggested this one, among others, as a lemony citrus with a little green bite. This has been around since the early Seventies, although it has been reworked. (Bottle purists be advised: it does come in a hard acrylic bottle, which I assume has to do with the low price.) And it does last, especially for a citrus, even on me. I’m thinking: work, gym, walks, lunches, wear it wherever I want. A decant in my handbag, as with all of these: the modern equivalent of smelling salts on a July day. Notes include the usual citrus fruits plus petit grain, jasmine, honeysuckle, basil, rosemary, coriander, oakmoss, cedar, sandalwood and vetiver. On me, the citrus notes predominate.

In Love Again (YSL): Okay, this isn’t news. It’s a Jean-Claude Ellena, from 1998, relaunched in 2004, and I’ve heard it described as a rehearsal for Un Jardin sur le Nil. But the surprise, at least on me, was the drydown. I sprayed it on a T-shirt, went to sleep in a cloud of sweet grapefruit, and work up in a garden of subtle berries and flowers. Okay, the name is kind of dumb, but the fragrance is really nice! Notes include grapefruit rind, grapes, bilberry (which I believe is from Australia), tulip tree flower, water lily, blackberry, sandalwood and musk.

Silences (Jacomo) Read Helg's review here. I can’t add much to it except to say that this is one of the most unusual scents I’ve ever experienced: mossy, dark, intense bitter green. Helg says that this one came out just before the release of Opium, and, as all the other companies fell all over each other trying to duplicate Opium’s success, it was mostly forgotten. I’ve never tried the vintage Vent Vert, unfortunately, but I bet this one is in the same ballpark. My husband describes it as “sultry.” If you like dark greens, get this while you still can; it’s ridiculously inexpensive on the online discount sites.

(Note: there is some confusion about the versions; there was a reformulation at some point. The most recent version features, according to Jacomo's site, narcissus absolute, iris “from Florence,” rose, blackcurrant absolute, galbanum, calendula, Bulgarian rose, lily of the valley, oakmoss, ambrette, sandalwood and vetiver.)

If you’d like to receive samples of these three, three mills of each, in a sprayer (c’mon, I’m not going to tell you how inexpensive these are and then send you a lousy 1 ml vial) leave me a comment and I’ll do a random drawing. Deadline is Sunday, April 19, midnight US E.S.T.


Narcissus photograph by Keith M. Borow. All rights reserved.

Perfume and Pink Pepper

A reminder: Deadline for the samples drawing -- see February 11 post for details – is March 1st, midnight US E.S.T.! Leave a comment to enter.


Two of the most esteemed perfumers working today – Jean-Claude Ellena and Geza Schoen, who creates scents for Ormonde Jayne – use a lot of pink pepper. This is one of those surprising ingredients of perfumery. I remember sampling a bit of Ellena’s Rose Poivree, passing wrist under husband’s nose and hearing “Is that…pepper?”

Well, as a matter of fact, yes.

Pink pepper (shall I bore you with the botanical name? Oh, ok: Schinusterebinthifolius Raddi), like other peppers, is technically a fruit borne by a tree. The pink pepper used in perfumery and cooking is cultivated on the island of Reunion, a French territory near Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Pink peppercorns get their "heat" from the terpene carene, which is similar bur not exactly the same as piperene, the “heat” in black, green and white pepper.

Mammals like us have a special nerve tract that responds to irritation while eating or sniffing – the trigeminal nerve. The brain then interprets this irritation or pain as “heat” and, in many cultures, pleasure. Capsaicin, the heat in New World peppers like Tabasco and cayenne, fires it up spectacularly. (Carbon dioxide, the fizz in soft drinks, stimulates it too.) The piperene or carene in peppercorns produces a more subtle heat, complemented by other flavors existing in the fruit.

Primary research (taste): Upon smelling a container of whole pink peppercorns, I get mostly a haylike scent. Upon biting into a few, there’s a burst of pepperlike flavor and a little heat – the piperine/carene – then sweetness. That is quickly eclipsed by a bitterness and an odd, pinelike note, then fruitiness. As I chew, the bitterness returns. Then the fruitiness. The various flavors don’t ever really meld; they continue to appear in sequence, until finally only a sweetish, slightly fruity aftertaste is left. It lingers for a long time. Ultimately, only the mild pepper taste remains, with a slight bitter edge.

The two fragrances that I most associate with pepperiness are Ormonde Jayne’s “Zizan” and L’Artisan’s “Poivre Piquant.” (I don’t currently have a sample of the latter, but definitely remember it!)

Primary research (smell): It is clear to me, on sniffing the top notes of the Zizan, that there is a slight but pleasurable irritation, which has to be involvement of my trigeminal nerve. (There is a similar, but more subtle, effect with “Man,” another Ormonde Jayne scent using pink pepper, and “Isfarkand.”) A quick look at some research on olfaction and trigeminal response reveals that they are linked, and do influence each other; in fact, trigeminal response is usually lowered in people with no sense of smell.

So we have another kind of stimulus entering the fragrance gestalt – slight irritation of a nerve tract that the brain often reads as pleasure. This expands olfactory enjoyment in what seems to me a most modern way.

I’m not sure who the first perfumer to use pink pepper was, or what the first scent to use it was. The tree grows all over the temperate world. My guess was that it was first culinary and then adopted for perfumery. Certainly, it appears in some of the most interesting and innovative scents.

I wonder what they’ll think of next.



Some fragrances using pink pepper (Basenotes lists 82) are: Ormonde Jayne’s Isfarkand, Champaca, Man, Orris Noir and Zizan; A Rose Poivee, Eau de Merveilles and Angeliques Sous la Pluie, all by Jean-Claude Ellena, Timbuktu and Poivre Piquant, and Red Tea by Bulgari.

In culinary terms, pink pepper can be used on or in almost anything, including chocolate.

Photo of Brazilian pink pepper from Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages, http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/

Ways of Love and Roses

One way I know that something is going to be good – irritate, challenge and finally enchant me – is that I can’t stand it at first. This applies to music and art, and sometimes people. I’ve learned, finally, to embrace this odd form of judgment, to trust it, because it doesn’t fail me very often.

There was a time I thought I hated rose, even as an ingredient. But I thought I’d give it one more chance. I’d read about the Les Parfums de Rosine line, and, strictly at random, I ordered a sample of Une Folie de Rose.

I know that many, perhaps most, of you have had the experience of fragrance-lust at first sniff. (Others haven’t been so lucky, yet, but keep trying. I wish it for you.) I’d only had it once before, several years ago, with Bulgari’s Eau Parfumee au the Vert (which I now know contains rose). You know what I mean. When you just have to have it. For me, sniffing Folie was like falling hard.

I sampled on, and found one other Rosine I craved, Poussiere de Rose. By that time, I had been around the Rosine block, so to speak, with a glittery little organza bag full of samples. My initial love for Poussiere wasn’t quite the all-encompassing passion I’d felt for the Folie. It was more…comfortable.

Une Folie de Rose is a Chypre. I don’t know what it is that the Chypres do for me, or why, but it is the combination of sharp, sweet and finally bitter-edged that appeals to my senses like no other fragrance family. The odd thing about my instant had-to-have-it impression of Folie is that I had no idea it was a Chypre. My power of analysis disappeared with first sniff. Without going into romance-novel prose, it was a lot like that stranger-across-a-crowded-room phenomenon we all know and, like the reasons for other choices of that kind, never really understand. In other words, I wanted the Folie. I didn’t give a damn what was in it.

With the Poussiere, I wanted to know. It was a different kind of attraction, the kind that is, well, smarter, but maybe not as much fun. I found out that “Poussiere” means “dust.” I even figured out how to pronounce it. I researched the notes and the fragrance’s history. I studied the plummy, lush top notes and considered similarities to perfumes I already owned. I even ordered a second sample – I had to be sure – and then I started shopping for the best price. I ordered the 50 ml bottle instead of the Folie’s 100. When it arrived, I didn’t rip the package open and spray madly, as I had with the Folie. I tried bits here, a little there. Tried it on skin, fabric and even my hair. I got to know it gradually. Then I put the seat back and got ready for a nice long ride.

It has occurred to me that these are the two polarities of loving fragrance – and of love.

I have a bunch of other Rosine samples and I plan to write about them. But these two will be the bookends.

Happy Valentine’s Day!



I’d love to know what your first gotta-have-it fragrance was. Tell me in the “comments” and I’ll do a drawing: one lucky winner will get samples of “Une Folie de Rose, Poussiere de Rose” by Les Parfums de Rosine and “Eau Parfumee au the vert” by Bulgari. Deadline is March 1st, midnight U.S. EST.

The illustration is a photo composite of the Georgia O’Keefe painting “Abstraction White Rose 1927” with an overlay of red silk, by (you guessed it) me.

The notes for “Une Folie de Rose” are those of the classic Chypre: coriander, bergamot, ylang-ylang, jasmine, iris, sandalwood, oakmoss (listed as “evernia prunastri extract” on the box, which I believe is real oakmoss), vetiver and patchouli. The rose notes are tea rose, Bulgarian rose absolute and Turkish rose absolute.

The notes for “Poussiere de Rose,” classified as a “Woody Floral,” are plum, apricot and ylang-ylang, rose, incense, tea, cinnamon, sandalwood, cedar, opoponax, benzoin, amber and musk.

Special Edition -- We Have Winners!

Winners in the "Heaven Sent" drawing* are:

Bookishredhead
Uma

*chosen using random.org

Please e-mail me at olfactarama at gmail dot com to claim your sample of the real, vintage Helena Rubinstein "Heaven Sent"! I'll need postal details.

(If I haven't heard from the winners by November 20, I'll re-randomize and pick a new one or ones.)

Thanks for entering, everybody!

Winners of the Yatagan/L'air du desert Marocain drawing!

Thanks to everybody for entering the drawing! The two lucky winners (chosen using random.org) are:

flannerygrace

Mark42

Send an email to olfactarama at gmail dot com with your postal info and I'll get your samples out posthaste!