The hyacinths that I bought in the local flower shop on Saturday, a little spring teaser for grey January days, opened their flower buds. Yesterday, the scent was a bit sharper, more invasive than today. Hyacinths come actually with quite a complex, not always pleasing scents. Notes are green, silvery, sharp, balsamic, spicy, sweet, a hint of powder, a touch brown cacao bitterness.
However it smells: It is quite dramatic.
Quite an amazing little thing. I put a few molecules and botanical raw materials together, yesterday, after jogging in rain, under the most grey sky imaginable. I picked cinnamic alcohol, phenylacetaldehyd-diemethylacetal, phenylpropanol, rose absolute, a lily based that I made a year ago (a fragrance in itself, consisting of 11 ingredients), ambroxan, and a few others. Just playing with scent strips.
And actually, I wanted to continue there. But I just learned that the flacons will be delivered later today to the “factory”. A few thousand again, coming from France, handmade by Waltersperger, blue ones and amber ones. Thus, I will need to head down to tauerville. No play time today.
Oh, please, do play with those hyacinths, Andy! The wonderland is out there and waiting for you! And I am waiting for your hyacinth perfume…
You must find the time to play, tomorrow mayby, so we can enjoy the outcome!! I love hyacinth and what you describe smells delicious!!
Have a nice week!!
Just retire and follow your inner path. I already know the outcome, for the simple reason that it’s bearing your hand, will be superb. And hyacinths, oh, they are sublime …. Many smiles to you, Andy
How nice that you return to the hyacinth game. Did you keep in touch with the mechanic, have you got his mobile number? Or is he out of the picture altogether?
With regard to the wonderful flacons, I wonder how long it takes from your ordering them until you can take delivery. Enjoy the week.
And so the inspiration always has to cope with the hard reality…
At some point right now I am more interested in a Tauerville Lily base
Always love lilies and other white florals. Hyacinths will come later this year 
Fragrant greetings, Aster
I hope I will not disappoint… Every year I seem to start with hyacinth again. One day I might be ready , though.
Happily looking forward to this day.
Fragrant greetings MariaA , time is the most precious thing these days for me!
Oh, thank you Anita for your trust and lovely comment. Let us hope it or I will not dissapoint …
have a lovely day!
Ih yes, the mechanic, Stephan.
It might be about time to call him again. I think I still have his number somewhere
Re: flacons time to delivery. Actually , this depends on the season. Usually it is about 1-2 months. Production time itself is a few days for a few thousand flacons. I guess they can do about thousand of my flacons a day. But my order has to find a slot in the factory’s production schedule.And then there is the transport, passing the “iron curtain” between EU and Switzerland takes quite a while with customs et al.
Fragrant greetings to you
Fragrant greetings, AromaX
I smelled this lily base of a year ago. I mixed it for a project on December 14 2010. I re-mixed it again three weeks ago to see whether I caan reproduce it. The Lily in this base is green, a bit spicy almost, and I actually did it back then with Hyacinth in mind. It fits perfectly with a hyacinth base, I think.
We will see where we get there.
I can hardly ever see a hyacinth without thinking of you, Andy; such is the power of the number of posts you’ve devoted to the amazing little plant.
Have fun with the flacons in Tauerville.
Flowers are so amazing, aren’t they? With their myriad olfactory “Eat At Joe’s!” signs for bees and other pollinators. I love that, even though we humans consider them symbols of beauty, they don’t always smell beautiful. Sometimes they can smell sharp, flat, bizarre or glaring. Goes to show how Nature is not here for our benefit, huh?
But I still think a hycanith-like fragrance would be really fun to smell and wear. Sounds like an odd, bold, cool combination of scents.
I echo Persolaise – Andy and Hyacinth have a heart drawn around them in the beach sands!!
BIRTHDAY music today – Dave Matthews and Jimmy Page`s B-days today – so pick your fave tracks/albums and crank it UP while you unpack flacons!! 
Hi Andy, I’m another one happy that you are back to the hyacinth. I bought three purple ones that bloomed just before Xmas and the aroma is like nothing else. You are right, at times sharp and even unpleasant, but at its best, so fragrant and enticing. I really hope you make 2012 the year for your hyacinth scent!
fragrant greetings, Hotlanta Linda
Andy and Hyacinth are like brother and sister it seems
I picked “Flashing lights” for tonight because I have to work tonight
Oh, yes, dear Persolaise, it seems to be the most discussed flower besides rose on this blog. … time to get over it and get it done, I’d say
Yes, Kirsten, I think a hyacinth might also do very well in a vintage like context. A la Caron…
Greetings, Jen, a hyacinth for the dragon.
That would be a nice name, too. in the year of the dragon….
I’m going to echo Anita…would love to see you able to head down to Tauerville as often as the muse strikes. From what’s been going onto your FB wall, it looks as if the artistic juices are firing on many cylinders, so to speak.
Of course, there are those who say art is best created within defined limits, for no boundaries leads to getting lost.
I always find myself bounding between the two desires…definition, and freedom…perhaps seen by in the negative as constraint, and an unbearable lightness.
Beyond the philosophizing, however, would like to simply say how intriguing your exploration sounds. Cheers!
Thank you, ScentScelf
I recently read, on the DVD *between the folds* something like “the constraints of the medium, the matter, is one of the biggest driving forces for the artists.”
in that sense, it is ultimately thrilling to look at flowers, express them in the words of fragrances and on 2D paintings and learn to deal with matter. …
I’d love to see a Tauer hyacinth! I think hyancinths and narcissus have fascinating, complex, and distinctive smells, far less simply pretty and straight-forward than many fragrances make them out to be. Easter-Bunny imagery surrounds hyacinths, but they’re no less carnal than tuberoses are.
Given your excellent job with muguet ( Carillon ), I have every confidence that your hyacinth would be worthwhile.
I love that documentary! Just recommended it to a teacher friend yesterday, who is conjuring a way to use origami to explore … well, not to explore one something, per se, but to excite the practice of exploring. Aesthetic, concrete, tactile, conceptual, etcetera.
You speak to something I love about exploring myself, when it comes to scent — or for using any one something as a launching point: the pushing out into various expressions of the idea, and then coming back to your understanding of it from the launching point. And seeing if you are standing on the same spot as when you ventured off, so to speak.
Based on your FB post today, I am surmising your are happy with where your wanderings took you. Which is indeed a happy thing. Looking forward to seeing what you end up presenting to others.