Perfume Making Workshops 30th April 1st May 2016 - London

Two workshops are planned:

How to Make Perfume & How to Make Better Perfume:

Advanced Skills for Perfumers:

Full details are on the Eventbrite Pages, but if you want to attend both please get in touch with me directly using enquiry@pellwall-perfumes.com as I can offer a discounted price for both.

Tolu Balsam

Tolu Balsam is a very useful natural fixative as well as a lovely base-note in its own right, but it isn’t the easiest of materials to handle.  It comes from the South American tree Myroxylon balsamum.  

It is used to fix materials such as juniper, petitgrain, spices and florals of many kinds and frequently forms a key component of oriental and chypre styles of perfume.

Rock-likc pure Tolu Balsam

Arctander describes it as: "a brown, orange-brown or dark yellowish brown mass, brittle when cold, and the fracture is glasslike or flintlike. Its odor is sweet-balsamic, cinnamic in type, faintly floral and with an undertone of vanillin.” and at normal UK temperatures it’s certainly rock-hard and behaves rather like a chunk of Brighton Rock when it’s broken.

Tolu and TEC form a strange, alien landscape

So to make it practical to handle it needs to be diluted in a suitable solvent - it’s often sold already diluted in this way though the dilution isn’t always declared nor the solvent named - I bought a pure Kg recently and diluted it ready for use in TEC (tri-ethyl citrate) in a process that turned out to be both quite involved and to produce some fun images, so I thought I’d write it up here.

Is that a creature emerging?

The first job was to get the Kg of rock-like Tolu Balsam soft enough to pour out of its container, which I did by sitting the container in a bain-marie and boiling the water beneath it: this took a few hours before the material was fully liquid.  Meanwhile a pre-weighed out amount of TEC was heated on my heater-stirrer with a stirring bar already in the bottom of it (if you don’t heat the solvent as well the tolu will go hard again as soon as it hits the cool liquid and takes much longer to go into solution).

The next step is to pour the hot, liquid tolu into the pre-warmed solvent (insulated gloves are called for for this step of course).  At this point we realised that there was a photo opportunity as the resulting non-yet-mixture looked like an alien landscape.  The tolu settled to the bottom of the solvent and the application of glass rods was necessary to get it to start dissolving as it was much too sticky for the automatic stirrer at that stage: as those went in it started to look like one of those scenes from the Alien series where the creatures start unfolding from the cave walls . . .

  This is all being done in a three litre glass beaker and as you can see in the later pictures the manual stirring took some time before we could leave the automatic stirrer to get on with the job on its own and the balsam tended to dry on the glass very quickly too.

The cling film you can see was to minimise loss of aromatic quality as this was all being done hot, although with such a high-boiling material and high-boiling solvent that isn’t a big concern.

A stirring start

Gloopy-looking stuff

Pasta possibly?

Eventually it reached the stage where it was liquid enough for the automatic stirrer to do its stuff and with the stirrer on a low setting it was left overnight to complete the mixing, kept at a constant 60 degrees centigrade by the integral heater.  By morning it was fully mixed to form a dark brown, consistent, mobile liquid and here you can see me concentrating hard as I pour it into a (slightly pre-warmed) 3Kg glass reagent bottle. The bottle is on the scale so that I can check the amount that’s gone into it for stock control purposes.

Perfect for Perfume: Tolu Balsam at 30% in TEC

We even captured a little video of that part of the process, which gives you a clear idea of the consistency once it’s finished:

A few chips and flakes were left over from the mixing process and these were put into a plastic jar  - the picture at the top of this post is of those, a few weeks later by which time they have merged together to form a single solid but uneven lump, much like that with which the whole process started.

Special Offer Ingredients

Clearance Bargain Ingredients - only one of each!

From time to time people order perfumery ingredients from me and, either because they say they are in a hurry or just because I’m trying to keep ahead of things, I make up the order before they pay . . . then sometimes they don’t pay, either because they changed their minds, ran out of money or perhaps because it was just a wind-up or a fantasy...

Me in declamation mode ;-)

Whatever the case I put the material aside to include in a future order but one way and another the storage shelf has become rather cluttered with these orphans, so I’ve decided it’s time to shift them, so here’s your chance to snag yourself a serious bargain:

• Azarbre, 10ml, sold
• Azarbre, 25ml, sold
• Camphene at 50% in IPM, 100ml, sold
• Cedarwood Atlas Supra, 100ml, sold
• Dihydro Ionone Beta, 10ml, sold
• Fixateur 505E, 100ml, sold
• Fixateur 505E, 100ml, £99 *New*
• Geosmin at 1% in DPG, 100ml, sold
• Hedione (original Firmenich), 1Kg, sold
• Hexalon / Tropical Ionone, 10ml, sold
• Hydrocinnamaldehyde, 25ml, sold
• Ionone alpha, 100ml, sold
• Iso E Super, 200ml, sold
• Iso E Super, 100ml, sold
• Methyl Diantilis, sold
• Musk Ketone at 10% in BB/ethanol, 1Kg, sold
• Myrcene, 5ml, free with anything else
• Nectarate, 100ml, sold
• Nutty Pyrazine, at 0.1% in IPM, 4ml, free with anything else
• Olibanum Resinoid (Frankincense resin) 30% in TEC, 500g £35 *New*
• Orris Givco 204, 500g sold 
• Rose Givco 217, 25ml, sold
• Rose Otto Persian, 30ml, sold
• Rum Acetal at 50% in DPG, 25ml, sold
• Traseolide, 500g £29 *New*
• Veramoss/Evernyl, 30g, sold
• Zenolide, 100ml, sold

Note that in each case what’s on offer is the specific size indicated: if you wanted another size they are all on the list (except Rum Acetal which I no-longer stock), but then you don’t get the benefit of the special clearance price.  Note 13/3/15: Just added Musk Ketone, pre-dissolved in benzyl benzoate and ethanol - a real bargain as it’s notoriously hard to get into solution - and another one I no-longer stock having changed over to IFF’s Musk Ketone Replacer.

UK Shipping on these is, as usual for ingredient sales, at the flat rate of £9.50 however many or few you buy.  If you’re anywhere else in the world, I’ll have to quote.

If you want to combine these with an order from the main lists that’s absolutely fine, but pay for these first or you might miss them while you’re browsing through the 300 other materials on offer!

Payments by PayPal or fast Bank Transfer please to secure them: Send an email to enquiry@pellwall-perfumes.com saying what you want and where you are.  I’ll process those in the order they arrive.

Order quickly to avoid disappointment!

Perfumery Ingredients at Pell Wall

The March issue of my Ingredients List is now online and the list now features some 300 materials, both natural and synthetic, with some very exciting new additions and a spectacular price reduction on one material thanks to some help from a friend in the US.

There are two versions of the list on the website and both can be downloaded or printed for easier reading as well as browsed directly on the site itself.  The first features descriptions of the odours and uses of the materials both from their manufacturers and from me.  I’m expanding this aspect all the time and there are new write-ups included since the last release in January.



But if you just want to compare prices with other ingredient suppliers you’ll appreciate the second list more - it’s just product names, CAS numbers and prices presented in tabular form:




Among the new additions you’ll find several new naturals such as labdanum absolute, orange flower absolute and violet leaf absolute - all among my favourite ingredients to use, though not cheap I’m afraid.

Speaking of cheap, that big reduction is for Centifolether - down from £52 for 100ml to just £22.  Also very good value is a new musk I’m offering for the first time that you don’t see about much called Zenolide: it’s a great material, as good as some of it’s better known brothers yet almost as cheap as Ethylene Brassylate so you can use it freely.  £17 for 100ml.

But if you want to find out what all the other new things are, you’ll just have to take a look at the lists :-)

The Quinolines

I thought it might be useful to do another in my occasional series of disambiguation posts about perfumery ingredients with easily confused names or equivalences.  This time I’m looking at a group of similar ingredients used to create an earthy, leather note in fragrances:

No quinolines in
Sticky Leather Sky

Isobutyl quinoline (CAS number 65442-31-1), of which there are several versions on the market all using that name and a version made by Givaudan called Pyralone and one made by Symrise called Isobutyl quinoline 54.

Butyl quinoline secondary - another Givaudan product name - designates a mixture of two isomers: CAS numbers 65442-31-1 and 67634-06-4, the second of which is 8-tert-butyl quinoline, which is not present in Pyralone.

Isobutyl quinoline (CAS number 68198-80-1) is another material produced by Symrise under the same name and, despite the name, is not equivalent with either of the Givaudan products.

Just as a matter of curiosity, I didn’t use any of the above materials to create the leather notes in Sticky Leather Sky: there are lots of alternative means of creating such notes, but that’s for another post.

Workshops - February 7th and 8th 2015 - London

Following on from my post last month, I’m now able to confirm dates and location for the workshops.

There are two workshops Introductory and Advanced - there are still places on the Introductory but only one place left on the Advanced:

Some ingredients for the Introductory Workshop

On Saturday 7th February I’ll be holding a repeat of the workshop last held in May 2014, which takes you from an introduction to the materials right through to making a bottle of your own perfume that you’ve designed yourself in the course of the day.  This workshop is suitable for people who have never made perfumes of any kind before but as there is a lot of practical work and individual tuition it is also suitable for those with some prior blending experience.  Arrival from 10am, starting promptly at 10.30 and concluding at 5.30.

Workshop Folder with integral calculator

The price is £155 per person, which includes light refreshments on arrival, mid-morning and mid-afternoon, lunch, six hours of tuition and practice, all the materials you need, a bottle of your own fragrance to take home, full documentation and a nice folder to keep all your formulas and notes in.

Introductory Workshop only £155

All the catering will be provided by the hotel (see below), which also offers free wifi in case you feel the need to check your email or send a tweet in the breaks.

On Sunday 8th February I’ll be holding an Advanced Workshop for those who have done a prior workshop or who otherwise already know all the essential techniques of blending and are familiar with the most common materials.  The price for the advanced workshop is £175 per person and in this one we’ll be doing two things:
In the first half we will look at a particular group of materials used in perfumery with a view to understanding them better.  Delegates will be able to vote their choice from:

• Musks - an exploration of musk ingredients, the differences between them in olfactory terms and how to use each to best effect.
• Ambers - an exploration of amber / ambergris ingredients, the differences between them in both olfactory terms and usage.
• Something else suggested by a delegate as long as I know about it in time to prepare materials and gain agreement from the rest of the group.
• Fixatives - an exploration of non-musk fixative ingredients, the differences between them in both olfactory terms and usage.

In the second half everyone will have the opportunity to either bring a blend they are working on that they’d like help improving, continue work on something started in the prior workshop or create something new.  I will be on hand to provide guidance throughout and, as the maximum number of people for this workshop is smaller, I’ll be able to spend more time with each person.  The full range of materials examined in the morning session will be available for you to practice within the afternoon.

As before you get to make up a bottle of your creation to keep, but with this one you can choose a 30ml bottle from the Pell Wall range to take home as well.

 Advanced Workshop only £175

Arrival from 10am, starting promptly at 10.30 and concluding at 5.30.

Everything you need is included and the workshop is fully catered by the hotel:

The location for both workshops is the St James’ Court Hotel on Buckingham Gate, which as they say in their literature, is a gemstone’s throw from Buckingham Palace.

Nearest tubes are St James’s Park (2 mins walk), Victoria (8mins walk) and Green Park (12 mins walk through the park and past the palace).

If you want to book both workshops you can still do so but the discounted rate is now sold out - sorry!

Perfume Making Workshop - Incense - London 31st January 2015

Just one place left on this workshop!

On Saturday 31st January I’m running another in my series of perfume making workshops, this one is in association with the Perfume Lovers London Meet-up Group and follows on from a talk I’m giving the previous Thursday on the use of incense notes in fragrance: you don’t have to be at the talk to do the workshop as here we’ll be focusing on making perfume, while the talk is about enjoying it.

The cost for the workshop is £150 and includes a vegetarian lunch and refreshments on the day:

An earlier perfume making workshop in London

Incense is almost certainly the oldest form of perfume and the burning of incense continues to be a significant part of the religious observance of a huge number of people around the world.  Whether for this reason or simply because it smells so attractive the incense note continues to enjoy popularity in modern, alcohol-based, perfumery too.

Over the course of the day we'll be investigating the use of a range of ingredients that contribute to the distinctive note of incense including frankincense; myrrh and other natural materials, as well as some of the synthetics that are used and the vital supporting role of some of the other materials involved.

By the end of the day you’ll have had an opportunity to build an alcohol-based fragrance of your own, featuring incense, and you get to take home a bottle of your finished creation.  If you’ve never made perfume before I’ll take you through the process step by step, but for those who are already familiar with these techniques you’ll be able to explore the incense materials and how they work together using the range of materials available.

Oh and in case you need an extra incentive, did you know there is a gin with an incense note too? We'll have some to taste, towards the end of the day.

The venue is a private house in Kew (near to Kew Gardens Underground).  Refreshments will be available from 9.30 and the workshop starts at 10am.

How To Make Perfume

The spread at the beginning of the article
as it appeared in print on 3rd August 2014

If you want to make perfume yourself and are looking for help to get you started, this is the place. Here are links to methods, sources of ingredients, recommended equipment and advice: everything I wished I could find when I started out myself!

On the 3rd of August the Independent on Sunday ran an article, which featured on the front page of the magazine, on the theme of how difficult it is to get started in perfumery whether you intend it as a hobby or, as I did, want to make a living at it.  I was interviewed for that article along with several other independent and amateur perfumers.

The article is by Rhodri Marsden and the accompanying photography by Dan Burn-Forti.  Dan has kindly supplied me with pictures from the photo-shoot we did for the piece and I’m featuring some of the ones that were not used in the article in this post.

I don’t propose to repeat any of what was said in the article here - it stands on it’s own - what I do want to do is to provide here some links and tips that may be helpful to those starting out or struggling with some of the problems the article highlights.

Part of the ingredients store
at Pell Wall by Dan Burn-Forti

So, first up if you’re looking for ingredients and don’t have the budget or space for an array such as we have at Pell Wall, where can you go to get supplies in smaller amounts?

• Pell Wall sell one of the largest ranges of perfumery materials available online in quantities from 10ml / 10g upwards, and can also offer a comprehensive range of starter kits.
• De Hekserij in the Netherlands have a good range and now also an English language website which makes ordering much easier for those of us who don’t speak Dutch
• Perfumer’s Supply House in the USA have a growing range including some very unusual ingredients
• Perfumer’s Apprentice in the USA have a large range including most of the basics you’ll need.

Chris in the Lab at Pell Wall
 by Dan Burn-Forti

All the above are reliable suppliers I’m comfortable recommending.  Those in Europe should keep in mind that ordering from the US will mean you’ll need to pay both VAT and Duty on import - exactly how that works depends on the courier the supplier uses - talk to them first so you know what to expect - however the reverse case isn’t so bad as the US does not charge duty on import for most perfumery materials.  Shipping is also a significant factor when ordering from abroad, so I recommend looking at suppliers as close to your own location as possible first.

For help with learning the art itself I’m going to point to other more detailed posts offering help:

• Blending and dilution methods
• How to measure ingredients and what sort of scales to buy
• The equipment you’ll need to get started and where to find it
• which ingredients to buy to get started
• Natural ingredients: what the terms for various types of extraction mean
• The IFRA regulations
• The EU labelling declaration requirements
• Some of the books I recommend to learn about the art

More ingredients than you can shake a stick
(or a smelling strip) at by Dan Burn-Forti

Places you can go to get some training or practice in the UK include:

• My own workshops in London or Shropshire - advertised on this blog as they come up
• The Cotswold Perfumery where perfumer John Stephen runs regular courses and, once you’ve attended one, will also sell you ingredients and equipment.
• Karen Gilbert runs courses online and in London covering making perfume and skincare

Some detailed posts about particular ingredients:

• Ambergris
• Ambergris substitutes
• Artemisia species
• Bitter Almond Oil
• Lily of the Valley materials
• Musks
• Quinolenes
• Sandalwood
• Styrax and Storax species

If all that didn’t answer your questions, you’ll need somewhere else to turn: I’m adding things to this blog all the time, so do please keep a watch here.  I’m also one of many people, including some other fully qualified perfumers, who answer questions, collaborate with one another and generally exchange information about this fascinating art and science in two main forums:

• The Basenotes Fragrance DIY Forum
• The Yahoo Perfumemaking Group

Join up on either or both and add your voice to the conversation.

Chris and Jungle (one of the Pell Wall Pack) in one of the
ingredients stores at Pell Wall by Dan Burn-Forti

Finally, let me just add that if you’re looking for specific advice or assistance with any perfumery problem and, for whatever reason, you don’t want to post about it on those public forums I’m willing to help - for a small fee - check the consultation section of the website for details.

Happy perfume making!

Lily of the Valley – mystery, manufacture & murder

Mystery

Perfumery has always glorified the floral and for centuries perfumers have sought ways to extract the essence from real flowers to incorporate into their creations. With many flowers this quest has met with considerable success, with a few commercially viable products produced that are still used in modern perfumery: rose and jasmine being the primary examples. 

Lily of the Valley - picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

One flower that has always eluded extraction is the Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majalis) or Muguet*: distillation yields very little of an unpleasant smelling oil not a bit like the dense, exotic scent of the fresh flowers.  Solvent extraction and even modern CO2 extracts have similarly been completely unable to capture the scent.  This is because the flower produces the scent only at the point of release – none is stored in the flower – so it cannot be extracted.  The flower itself only contains pre-cursor chemicals from which the scent is formed directly into the air.

Diorrissimo - picture from Basenotes

Yet many people will be familiar with the scent of Lily of the Valley, not through smelling the fresh flowers, but from perfumes containing or replicating its scent – perhaps the most famous of these being Diorissimo.  So, if you can’t extract the scent, how is that done?

---

*Muguet is the French word for Lily of the Valley, a flower popularly used at weddings.  Lily of the valley is a  sweetly scented (and highly poisonous) woodland flowering plant that is native throughout the cool temperate Northern Hemisphere in Asia, Europe and in the southern Appalachian Mountains in the United States.

Manufacture

Here we see how the chemist is the perfumers best friend: a good number of materials have been discovered or created that replicate, at least in part, the scent of these mysterious flowers.  Many people would say that synthetic Lily of the Valley begins with the synthesis in the early part of the 20^th Century of Hydroxycitronellal: it’s difficult to be sure exactly when it was first used because the nature of the material was kept a closely guarded secret.  What we do know is that as early as 1906 it was being made by Givaudan and sold under the trade name Laurine. 

Dr E Emmet Reid
Credited with re-discovering Hydroxycitronellal
Image from The Johns Hopkins University

At the outbreak of WWI it was being manufactured in Germany and, as the war meant it ceased to be available, efforts were made to find ways to make it that resulted in it’s being manufactured in an American factory and, during the 20s, it gradually become well-known within the trade.  Most perfumers would agree that, while no one chemical can ever fully represent the scent of a flower, hydroxycitronellal gives a very close facsimile to the aroma of the fresh flowers of Lily of the Valley.  Curiously enough however it does not appear to be present in that, or any other natural flower scent.

I’m presenting in the sections at the end of this post, descriptions of a selection of materials that replicate the scent of Lilly of the Valley, with descriptions of their olfactory properties as well as, in many cases, the restrictions on their use that have led to their decline.  These are mainly for the benefit of DIY perfumers, but may also be of interest to perfumistas curious about ingredients.  I’ve included quite a few quotations from Steffen Arctander’s wonderful descriptions of aroma chemicals – rather less well known than his work on materials of natural origin – but just as good.

Murder

Structure of Lyral - image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

So where does the murder come in?  Well in one case a forthcoming ban by the European Union will, over the next couple of years, result in the certain demise from perfumery altogether of one of those materials.  The material that is being killed off by the regulators is Lyral and although it’s only going to be banned in the EU, that will very likely be reflected in a prohibition by IFRA (the International Fragrance Association) and even if it isn’t all the major perfume manufacturers will phase it out of use completely, so it will effectively vanish from the world.

After the jump you can read detailed descriptions of a range of materials used in connection with Lily of the Valley scents.

Perfume Making Workshop in London

Perfume Making Workshop with the Pell Wall Perfumer

I’m pleased to report that, by popular demand, I will be running another perfume making workshop in London on:

Saturday 31st May

from 11am to 5pm

at The Scent Salon
Les Senteurs:

2 Seymour Place, Marble Arch, London W1H 7NA

(that’s the Wigmore Street end of Seymour Place)

The workshop is aimed at people who have never made a fragrance for themselves before and concludes with a bottle of a fragrance you've created yourself: for those who have made fragrances before, perhaps at one of my earlier workshops, you will of course be able to make something completely new.

The Scent Salon at Les Senteurs

The price is £135 per person, which includes light refreshments, five hours of tuition and practice, all the materials you need, a bottle of your own fragrance to take home and even a glass of fizz at the end.  There will be a break for lunch, which isn't included, at one of the many nearby establishments.

I will provide tuition about materials, guidance on blending and everything you need, all you need to bring is your un-perfumed self.

I'll will take you through the recording of the formula too and as long as you do that carefully you'll be able to order more of the fragrance you've designed from Pell Wall in the future.

I'll also provide odour and use descriptions of each of the 30+ materials we'll be using and these will be both available on paper on the day and sent electronically in advance for those who want to do some pre-work.  I'm also open to requests (in advance) if there is a particular material you want to work with, as long as I have it available and it isn't outrageously expensive then I'm happy to bring some along.

The venue is of course also a specialist perfume shop, so you might like to have a browse while you're there.  The shop is open until 7pm and although the course ends at 5pm, I will stick around to answer questions afterwards too.

Space is limited and places have started to go already so if you are interested, please book quickly to avoid disappointment:

Perfume Making Workshop: London 28th September 2013

I'm pleased to report that following several requests I'm going to be running a workshop in London on

A Perfume Making Evening in Shropshire

28th September from 11am.  It will have a similar format to perfume making evenings that I've run before in that it is aimed at people who have never made a fragrance for themselves before and concludes with a bottle of a fragrance you've created yourself.

I'll provide tuition about materials, guidance on blending and all the materials you need, you only need to bring your un-perfumed self.

I'll be taking you through the recording of the formula too and as long as you do that carefully I'll be able to make up more of the fragrance you've designed in the future for a small fee too.

Details of the London workshop

In this case it's taking place on a Saturday though, and the venue is being very kindly provided by Jane at her home in Belsize Park.  Jane will also be running a Lotion Making Workshop herself immediately afterwards (starting at 4pm) so if you are interested in attending that too you could make a very productive weekend of it.

An earlier lotion workshop in London

Space is obviously very limited and places have started to sell already before I've even posted about it so if you are interested, please book quickly to avoid disappointment.

Should it happen that we get a lot more bookings than we can handle I may be able to run an additional workshop on the Friday afternoon just before, so if that would be suitable for you please let us know (I appreciate that isn't convenient for a lot of people who will be at work).

If you'd like to book, please follow the links to Jane's skincare site and book there for either or both courses.  If you have any questions you can also email me.

Natural Perfume Materials: what the terms mean

There are quite a few methods by which the aromatic principles of natural materials are made available for use in perfumery and unfortunately some of the terms used are obscure and others are sometimes mis-used.

The purpose of this post is to set out the main terms used, together with definitions of widespread acceptance.  In putting these together I have relied on two main sources: first Arctander’s Pefume and FlavorMaterials of Natural Origin – written in the 1950s and early 60s but still regarded by most perfumers as the definitive work.

Second Brian Lawrence who is published regularly in Perfumer & Flavorist Magazine and elsewhere and is, probably, the definitive modern writer on the subject.

Before we get into the terms for natural materials, it is perhaps useful to examine what we mean by natural in this context and eliminate terms used to indicate synthetic materials.  Very few materials are suitable for use in perfumery exactly as they occur in nature: citrus oils and copaiba balsam are the main exceptions, requiring no processing beyond pressing the peel or releasing the balsam from the tree: in the great majority of cases processing is necessary and in some cases the odorous principles only form during processing (see my post on Bitter Almond Oil for an example of this).  A material is generally considered to be ‘natural’ when that processing is primarily physical, rather than chemical, in nature: these things are what this post is about.

Fragrance Oils are not usually natural

The term Fragrance Oil is widely used to indicate a blend of materials that may be both natural and synthetic, designed to replicate a natural odour.  These are often composed entirely from synthetic ingredients and almost never with entirely natural ones and as such do not fall within the definition of a natural material.  Occasionally they may be passed off as natural, sometimes innocently by traders who have themselves been deceived by a producer, but for the most part they are sold labelled as ‘fragrance oil’ and are usually cheaper than natural equivalents where these exist.

The main types of volatile isolates that are obtained commercially are essential oils, concretes, absolutes, pommades, resinoids, spice/herb oleoresins, extracts, infusions, and tinctures. The definitions of these, and some other important terms are set out here and for convenience I’ve started by listing first the three most common types – Essential Oil, Concrète and Absolute.  All other types follow in alphabetical order for ease of reference.

The most common natural materials

Bergamot in cultivation
(courtesy Wikimedia)

Essential Oil: The isolated aromatic portion of a plant that is borne in that plant within distinctive oil cells. In some exceptional cases the essential oil is formed during processing. Most essential oils are isolated by either hydro-distillation (water, steam or both) or cold pressing with some few being produced by dry (including destructive) distillation.  Water distillation implies direct contact between the plant material and the boiling water, steam distillation implies steam being produced separately and blown through the material – in the combined case the water is heated by injected steam.  Some essential oils are routinely ‘rectified’ after production – a process that may be entirely physical or may involve the introduction of synthetic aroma chemicals to standardise the odour.  Examples include Bergamot, which is routinely rectified to remove bergaptens (furocoumarins) – this is done by fractional distillation.  White Thyme is natural thyme oil that has been corrected by the addition of aroma chemicals to produce standardised oil chemistry – for most this would no longer be considered a natural product.

Concrète (often written as concrete with the same meaning):  an extract of fresh (cellular) plant material made using a hydrocarbon solvent, commonly hexane or petroleum ether. It is rich in hydrocarbon soluble material and devoid of water-soluble components. It is generally a waxy semi-solid, dark colour material free from the original solvent used in extraction, often containing a high percentage of largely odourless plant waxes.

Orris root being dried

One important note here on misuse of this term concerning Orris Butter, which is frequently called Orris Concrète, but is more correctly the essential oil of orris (the roots of certain species of Iris), which happens to be solid.  There is also a true Orris Concrète, from which a true Orris Absolute is made – the latter is a clear, mobile liquid unlike the so-called Orris Concrète or Butter which is solid at room temperature.

Absolute:  A highly concentrated alcoholic extract, usually of a concrète, which contains only alcohol soluble materials. Its primary use is in alcoholic perfumes but normally contains little or no residual ethanol.  Absolutes are also sometimes extracted from pommades (sometimes called Absolute from Pommade or Absolute from Châssis - the latter term is sometimes used to describe an absolute made by extracting the spent flowers already used in enfleurage).  An Absolute from Distilation Water (e.g. Rose Water Absolute) is also sometimes made using the hydrolat left over from making an essential oil as the starting material.  Sometimes the term Absolute is also used to mean the alcohol soluble fraction of a resinoid.

Other terms in alphabetical sequence

Copaifera langsdorfii 

Balsam: A natural exudate obtained from a shrub or a tree (either physiological or pathological). It is characterized by being rich in benzoic and cinnamic acids and their corresponding esters and is insoluble in water but completely or almost completely soluble in ethanol.  Balsams may, upon ageing, form resins and so the boundary between these two may be blurred.

CO² Extract – these include a range of extraction processes using carbon dioxide as the solvent.  In most cases the solvent used is rendered liquid at much higher temperatures than normal an so the extract produced is often, more correctly, referred to as SFE – supercritical fluid extract – and I’ve said a bit more about it under that heading.

Extract: A concentrate of a dried less volatile aromatic plant part obtained by solvent extraction with a polar solvent.  In practice this term is used quite indiscriminately to mean several of the types of processed material where there result is concentrated – with the solvent removed.  In flavour work the term is used even more widely to include emulsions and diluted materials that may be water soluble (possibly dissolved in water) and of very short shelf-life. To be meaningful this term really requires further qualification or clarification and perfumers should approach ‘extracts’ with appropriate caution.

Note that the French term ‘extrait’ (directly translated this would be extract) is used in English to mean something quite specific: An alcoholic extract of a pomade produced by enfleurage: a tincture of a pomade.   The term is also occasionally hijacked to mean an alcoholic dilution of any material of a particular strength or a blended perfume of a particular strength “extrait strength” is sometimes used to mean much the same as Parfum, that is an alcoholic perfume with 15-30% aromatic ingredients.

Gum: Can be either a natural or synthetic material but, strictly, should be used only for water-soluble materials of very high molecular weight.  In perfumery it can, however, also be used of resins and turpentines.  Under the strict definition gums are odourless and therefore of no use in perfumery.

Commiphora myrrha tree one of the primary sources
from which the oleo-gum-resin
myrrh is harvested.

Gum Resin: A natural exudate obtained from a tree or plant. It is comprised of gums and resins. If the gum resin source also contains an essential oil, it is called an oleo-gum-resin.  Only partially soluble in alcohol, hydrocarbons etc. and may be partially soluble in water where the proportion of gum is significant.

Infusion: A hot extraction of either a plant part or its exudate with either water or an organic solvent. Infusions are not at all popular because it is difficult to control their chemical composition.

Isolate: sometimes clarified as natural isolate, this is prepared material, produced from a precursor of natural origin, most often an essential oil, by any of a range of physical processes including fractional distillation or freezing, chromatographic separation and others.  At one time many perfumery materials were made this way that today are available much more cheaply as synthetics.  Natural perfumers may still take advantage of the fact that many natural isolates continue to be produced commercially for the flavour industry where the premium on natural flavours justifies the increased cost of production.

Oleoresin: The natural tree trunk or bark exudate, which is extremely rich in an essential oil.  The term is occasionally also used of prepared materials.  In either case they consist of essential oil and resin.  Turpentines are oleoresins where the resin portion is acidic.

Pommade:  The product of the enfleurage fat extraction of fresh flowers. Enfleurage was once much more widely used than today but is still the most efficient (highest yielding) method with certain flowers that continue to manufacture perfume in the flower after it is cut, such as tuberose for example.

Resin Absolute: generally applied to materials obtain directly from plant raw-materials by extraction with hot alcohol: once the alcohol has been recovered, what is left is referred to as the Resin Absolute.  As the product is often very thick and sticky, the recovered alcohol may be partially replaced by a high-boiling solvent such as Isopropyl Myristate when it is usually sold as ‘mobilised with N% of XX’.  Notable exceptions include the extraction product of Oakmoss with hot alcohol, which is usually called Oakmoss Resin; that of Orris is likewise called Orris Resin.

Benzoin resin from which Benzoin Resinoid is made

Resinoid:  A solvent extract of a resin-rich material containing natural exudate or dried plant material with a hydrocarbon solvent. Resinoids are generally viscous to semi-solid mixtures. They can be considered as being equivalent to concrètes but made from dead / dried (non-cellular) materials.

Spice/Herb Oleoresin: A solvent extract of a dried spice or herb, which is virtually free from the extracting solvent. It is used more-or-less exclusively by the food and pharmaceutical industries as a replacement for ground spices and spice tinctures.

Supercritical Fluid Extract This is an extract made using supercritical carbon dioxide (CO²) or another suitable supercritical fluid material as the solvent. Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) of plant material with solvents like CO²,

propane, butane, or ethylene is increasingly being done. SFE allows the processing of plant material at low temperatures, hence limiting thermal degradation, and avoids the use of toxic solvents.  A common downside of SFE is that the resulting material may not be fully soluble in ethanol and in many cases further extraction with ethanol to produce, what is in effect an Absolute from SFE is conducted – these are sometimes sold as CO² Select Extract or, more intuitively as Ethanol Soluble SFE.

Tincture: An alcoholic or aqueous alcoholic extract of a natural raw material in which the solvent is left in the extract as a diluent. Tinctures are used both in the fragrance and pharmaceutical industries. The amount of alcohol in the tincture, which ranges from 20-95%, is standardized by the manufacturer.  See my post on Ambergris for an example of a tincture used in perfumery