Before we dig into the body and some notes of the EAU D’ÉPICES (with an educative goal: give you an idea on style): Here are the winners of the draw of last week (tataaaaa!):
The consolation prize goes to Elena (cm….@yahoo.com): A discovery set is yours. And you pick the samples of your choice.
Full bottle of Eau d’épices goes to Elisa (elisa.g….@gmail.com).
Congratulations to both of you. And to all readers who commented but did not win: Thank you, for sharing, and good luck with the next draw.
And back to the developing story… I finished the newsletter draft, scheduled for release at September 15, after Pitti Frangranze, in order to send some impressions from Florence in the newsletter. In 2.5 weeks we head south, through the Gotthard rail tunnel, finished in the early 1880, 15 km of tunnel, imagine! Back then, folks in Europe really were very entrepreneurial. And brave, taking a lot of risks.
My risks are somewhat smaller. The biggest risk for me in Florence might be to get into total exhaustion mode. It will be busy days with a lot of sniffing and talking. One of the objects of the sniffing and talking will be the EAU D’ÉPICES. We have discussed some aspects (not all!) of the spicy head notes and the orange floral heart in previous posts
The MAIN AXES of the fragrance are: spices, orange blossom, incense, woods. Talking in axes is somewhat simplistic. Another picture might be a WEB. The corners of the web are: Spices, citrus, orange blossom,jasmine, orris root, incense, amber, wood, tonka beans. And all corners are connected and resonate.
The orange blossom is a heart note, it does not stay forever, but leaves you after a while, given full room for the body notes. Making the heart notes stay longer is called fixation. One tool to fix heart notes is by using musk molecules. I do not use these musk molecules. But there are other synthetic molecules that may act as fixation. Some of them are so potent, they are just like a glue, and are hard to dose, because they become obnoxious after a while. Others are truly pleasant, like some of the synthetic ambers, my favorite being AMBROXAN, a molecule that is somewhat costly, with a price of about 1300 $ US for the kg it is about three times the price of a good Incense essential oil: Ambroxan is a single molecule, but is smells very complex (amber, vibrant wood, floral tobacco) and not cheap like other synthetic ambers that you find in washing powder.
And: It is a great fixation for flowers, without suffocating them. Thus, Ambroxan is there in the base of Eau d’épices, with its woody vibrancy it lifts the heart and fixes the blossom. And it acts like a bridge between floral heart and incense woody base. To render the ambroxan, to make it full, to add depth, I complement it with AMBREINE, a natural extract of Cistus ladaniferus that is … well, very complex! It is a special quality material, like a cut out of cistus, leaving the woody, spicy vibrant side intact, but removing the sweetness. Imagine the fragrance of pineta in summer! It blends very well with ambroxan, and it grounds the INCENSE essential oil that I am using in the base. The incense is an essential oil from Boswellia carterii, steam distilled in France, collected resin in the wild in East Africa and the Arab peninsula, it is a different quality than the incense that I use in the Incense extrême. It is more airy, lighter, less woody, brighter if you want. These three, ambrein, incense essential oil and ambroxan, make up one major building block of the base of the fragrance. There are more building blocks in the base, adding to the complexity.
Complexity is ultimately responsible for the many facets of a fragrance, of its brilliance and its roundness. You can get complexity quite easily by naturals, simply because naturals per se are very, very complex. Of course, you can not just put a drop of a natural oil into your kiloliters of perfume mixture. You must use them in substantial amounts. To give you an example: I use 2 parts Ambrein, 3 parts ambroxan, 4 parts incense essential. Together, these three ingredients make up about 1/5 of the perfume base.
Sunny greetings from Mumbai.
Congratulations to the winners of the draw and a HUGE thank you to you for a thoroughly engrossing post. Definitely one to keep and re-read.
I like your idea of a web-like construction of a perfume as it ties in with thoughts I’ve recently had about the validity of thinking in terms of top/heart/base. Perhaps you could explore this in a future post…?
Hi from the Lucky winner!
looking forward to getting the samples ) What a joy!
A full-fledged review of Eau d’Epices will most certainly follow )
Thank you, Andy! I can’t wait to smell it!! Congrats to Elena, too!
Congratulations to the winners!!! And thank you Andy for this ongoing post. I am learning A LOT as you break down the composition of Eau d’epices and as I do, I also realize that there is much, much more for me to learn. So when you say that “amber” is in EdE it is an easy way to explain a complex idea since really amber means a combination of the synthetic ambroxin and the natural ambriene as well as the incense essential oil. Do ambrienes vary from location to location? And if you don’t mind can you also tell us more about the tonka beans in EdE? I hear these mentioned often but don’t really know what they are. Thanks and I apologize in advance if I am misunderstanding some of these concepts. It’s my first insight into just how complicated this process is!
good evening, Jen
Actually, when I said amber, I could have said ambergris. The ambreine question (variations from location) is not 100% relevant in this context.
Yes, of course, the cistus ladaniferus resins or essential oils will vary depending whether you got them from Greece or France. But the ambreine is a special case. It is a bit like a “capped” cistus resin, and hence the human factor, the know-how of producing the extract, might be more important than the raw material’s source.
On Tonka…. yes , later. At some point….
Good evening Persolaise,
yes, I think I will need to address this issue (web , axes, head-heart-body) ….May need some time, though.
Thank you for a great read!!! You always have something cooking on all of your burners at once, which is par for your creative-ity!! (What was all that about being burned-out? – yea, right!*** Never Happen!!) Song for you is `Workin` for a Livin` from Huey Lewis and the News!!!
Thank you for all the detailed explanations, it’s so interesting. Eau d’Epices sounds so wonderful, can’t wait to sniff it!
Andy, thank you, again, for the wonderful insight(lesson)
the “web” seems nearer the time (developpment)-composition concept
the issue is realy fascinating, I would be more than happy will you choose to address it in the future
Thanks for your latest posts which indeed get very interesting for my amateur nose. This gives me an oportunity to explore your fragrances from a new angle. And to get to know something better is to increase the joy of knowing it.
Andy, I really enjoyed this post as it describes Eau d’Epices into language that would help us understand it conceptually. Looking forward to most posts and the new scents coming up~
Andy! Your Eau d ‘epices development description is VERY interesting for me. I’d like you to know, that I am seriously interested in building perfumes. Some interesting thoughts and facts from Master is the best I can get!
Greetings, Marcin and I hope you will soon be able to follow my thoughts in reality
Monika: and I look forward to Pitti….
great post about a perfume ! it makes us want to sniff it right now
Dear Andy,
every time I check your blog , I always find somenting new, I didn’t read !!!….I’m very impressed by your description about Ambroxan and Ambreine….As I try to make “perfumed” experiments on my own, I would like to know, if it’s possible, where you buy these raw materials…..if you can suggest me any web site that sells online even in small quantities !!!!…..Thank U ….have a nice evening/morning