by Mandy Aftel
Civet—what Shakespeare called “the very uncleanly flux of a cat”—is the only one of the four animal ingredients (the fourth being castoreum, which comes from the beaver) that is still readily available and used, in slight quantities, in many perfumes. Although the civet is commonly referred to as a cat, it is not a true member of the cat family (Felidae) but belongs to the Viverridae, which includes the mongoose. It is about the size of a fox, with gray fur and black spots. It is native to Abyssinia, Java, Borneo, Sumatra, and Bengal. Both males and females have a deep pouch in the posterior part of the abdomen, containing the perineal glands and the soft, fatty substance they produce. Its function is not fully understood, but it is believed to be a sexual attractant and also, perhaps, a means of defense, on account of its foul odor—although hounds will leave any other scent to pursue it.
English dandies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries dangled civet-scented gloves and handkerchiefs as they took snuff and ogled the barmaids in coffeehouses like Man’s at St. James and Nando’s in Fleet Street. The aroma drove the poet William Cowper from Nando’s and inspired him to record his revulsion in verse:
I cannot talk with civet in the room,
A fine puss gentleman thats all perfume;
The sight’s enough, no need to smell a beau
Who thrusts his nose into a raree show.
Civet
I’m not with Cowper. Civet is my favorite perfume ingredient, and what it does to a creation is nothing short of magic. Certainly humans find its odor disgusting at full strength, thanks to the presence of the compound skatole. Yet, as with other essences of animal origin, dilution transforms it into a pleasant and singularly attractive scent. There is no ingredient with which civet does not blend beautifully. It prowls through a blend, transforming each of its elements and giving the whole extraordinary depth. As with all magical things, you need only a minute amount to perform miracles—a drop for one to two ounces of perfume. (For this reason, it is useful to make a tincture of civet so that you can precisely control the amount you add when you are creating a blend: add ten drops of civet to two ounces of alcohol and let it marry for a month.)
Like the other animal essences, civet has tremendous fixation. In fact, long-ago perfumers “pre-fixed” their alcohol by adding civet or any of the other animal fixatives to their perfume alcohol and letting it rest for a month. The resulting alcohol bore no trace of civet in its fragrance, but the perfumes created with that alcohol were more tenacious.
In Ethiopia, where civets are raised for their perfume ingredient, they are kept in terrible conditions, whereas in other parts of the world, such as Vietnam, they roam freely. They are not killed or injured in the extraction process, but they are placed in long cages in which they cannot turn around, and they are teased and irritated, as the secretion is much greater when the cat is angered. The civet is extracted from the pouch with a spatula. It is pale yellow and semiliquid, but it hardens and darkens upon exposure to air.
With civet no longer in such demand, it should be possible to develop a more humane way of harvesting this peerless substance. The cat does produce it naturally, and even without provocation it produces an excess that it must wipe off on the bars of its cage or elsewhere to relieve itself when there is too much in the pouch.
Certainly there is reason to treat the civet well. Once considered a pest in Indonesia’s coffee-growing regions because it ate the reddest, ripest coffee cherries, the civet was discovered (you don’t want to know how) to excrete the beans intact. Kopi Luwak, the world’s most expensive coffee, is now made from beans recovered from civet feces, and it is reputed to be extraordinary.
Ambrette seed, from the hibiscus plant, is known as the vegetable equivalent of musk. The Latin name of the species, Hibiscus abelmoschus, derives from the Greek ibis, the storklike bird that is said to chew the plant, and the Arabic Kabbel-Misk, “grain or seed of musk.” The fruit of the plant is harvested when the plant is six months old. When the fruit dries, it bursts open and the large seeds are collected. The seeds are pressed to render the musky oil they contain.
Hibiscus
The resulting essence is a powerful and lasting oil that improves with age. Good ambrette seed has a body note that is smooth, rich, sweet, floral, and musky all at once, like brandy or overripe fruit. Its tenacity is incredible. A little goes a long way, and it must be smelled imaginatively and dosed carefully.
Costus comes from the roots of the costus plant, Saucier lappa, which grows wild in the Himalayan highlands. According to Arctander, “It has a particular soft63 but extremely tenacious odor, reminiscent of old precious wood, orris root … with a distinctly animal … undertone. The odor has been compared to that of human hair, fur coats, violets, and ‘wet dogs.’” It takes some openness to learn to like costus, but it is a terrific base that, used sparingly, imparts depth and fixation to a blend along with warm, woody notes, and can produce diffusive power and intriguing top notes. Costus blends well with sandalwood, vetiver, patchouli, oakmoss, opoponax, and rose. It is considered an aphrodisiac.
Tobacco used in perfume comes from various species of Nicotiana. Blond tobacco, the most available, has been disdained as a perfume ingredient because of its dark brown color, but that should not be an impediment to the natural perfumer, especially since the colorless version has an infinitely inferior aroma. (An essence is decolorized by treating it with an adsorbent such as activated charcoal, but the process tends to strip it of some of its desirable scent nuances along with the unwanted pigments.)
As might be expected, essence of tobacco conveys the very thick, liquid smell of cigar tobacco and lends a dry note to perfume. It can be useful in balancing the cloying sweetness of some florals. It mixes well with sandalwood, cedarwood, bergamot, clary sage, labdanum, and vetiver.
Balsamic essences have in common a sweet vanilla note with a woody, floral, or spicy undertone. The balsamics include tolu balsam, Peru balsam, benzoin, tonka bean, opoponax, and styrax.
Benzoin is a secretion of the tree Styrax tonkinense. The tree does not produce the secretion naturally, however. A wound is inflicted in the bark, sufficiently deep to result in the formation of ducts through which the resinous secretion is produced. When it is hard and dry, the material is collected, in the form of small lumps or tears.
Benzoin
Benzoin has a soft, sweet, warm body note that evolves into a balsamic powdery finish and blends with almost anything. It is a good fixative for Oriental scents and, to a lesser extent, florals. It is an inexpensive one, too, and can be used economically to extend a vanilla note. Too much benzoin, however, can suppress the odor of the other ingredients. (It, like civet, can be used to pre-fix alcohol, by adding 2 ml benzoin to I quart of alcohol to marry for a month.) People tend to find benzoin calming, seductive, sensual, and rejuvenating.
Peru balsam, like benzoin, is a pathological secretion produced by wounding the Myroxylon pereirae tree, which grows to a height of fifty feet or more in high altitudes in Central America. A mid-sixteenth-century papal bull64 authorized clergy in El Salvador to harvest and use the precious balsam and pronounced it a sacrilege to destroy or injure the trees that produced it. The document also described the extraction process in detail. An incision was made in the tree, “whence it gradually exudes, and is absorbed by pieces of cotton rags inserted for the purpose. These, when thoroughly saturated, are replaced by others, which, as they are removed, are thrown into boiling water. The heat detaches it from the cotton, and the valuable balsam being of less gravity than water, floats on the top, is skimmed off, and put into calabashes for sale.“
Peru balsam
The odor of Peru balsam resembles that of vanilla but is not so generally pleasing. It looks like molasses, and because of its dark color was not much used in perfumery but reserved for soap. The natural perfumer, however, should appreciate its color as an essential and beautiful aspect of its character, like the flaws in leather. With its rich, sweet dryout note, the essence impa
rts a warmth to perfumes, an edible quality. It blends well with petitgrain, patchouli, sandalwood, ylang ylang, labdanum, and tuberose. It smells similar to tolu balsam except that tolu is slightly spicy, while Peru is slightly floral.
Eartby essences have the musty, stale smell of freshly turned soil. They include vetiver, angelica root, patchouli, oakmoss, and labdanum.
Vetiver is a grass whose rootlets have been used for their fragrance since ancient times. The root itself possesses an agreeable aroma and, when dried, has been used to scent linens and clothes. It was also woven into mats that were sprinkled with water and hung like curtains to cool and scent the air in a dwelling. The oil distilled from the roots is amber-colored and, as described by Arctander, “sweet and very heavy-earthy, reminiscent of roots and wet soil, with a rich undertone of ‘precious wood’ notes.” Some people find the odor of vetiver too strong straight from the bottle, but it dilutes beautifully, lending a richness to dry-toned blends and the smell of stems and leaves to rose-based perfumes. Vetiver is extremely long-lasting and is an excellent fixative. It blends well with other green and herbal notes as well as with patchouli and sandalwood. Vetiver is grounding and strengthening.
Vetiver
Angelica root can be dried and distilled to produce a pale oil with a light, peppery top note and an earthy, herbal body note that is slightly musky and animal-like, with a spicy undertone. It is one of the lighter base notes and lends an astringent and herbal base to a blend, but its power can easily be underestimated. Each batch must be carefully smelled for variations in concentration. It has a unique tenacity and great diffusive power, and it blends well with patchouli, opoponax, costus, clary sage, vetiver, and oakmoss.
Patebouls is a dark brown oil distilled from the stems and leaves of the pogostemon plant, which resembles garden sage, but with less fleshy leaves. For many the smell of patchouli is wrapped in memories of the sixties, but in the mid-nineteenth century, it was used to scent Indian paisley shawls and to discourage moths from damaging them. French manufacturers, having discovered the secret of their odor, began to import the dried leaves to perfume knockoffs of their own manufacture, which they passed off as genuine.
Patchouli
The odor of patchouli is the most powerful of any essence derived from plants. It has a sweet, rich, herbaceous top note and an earthy, slightly camphorous body note that evolves into a dry, woody, spicy note. As Arctander notes, it will remain perceptible on a perfume blotter for weeks or months, with a sweetness that “is almost sickening in high concentration.” A well-aged patchouli develops a rich, almost fruity note. Patchouli blends well with labdanum, vetiver, sandalwood, cedarwood, lavender, angelica, clove, and clary sage. It also works well with rose, extending and fixing its sweetness. Patchouli imparts strength, character, allure, and lasting quality. It is an aphrodisiac that is also grounding and balancing.
Oakmoss (mousse de chêne) is the soft, treacly, greenish-black lichen Evernia prunastri, which grows primarily on oak trees. In its natural state it has no discernible fragrance, but after it has dried and rested for a while, it develops a scent reminiscent of seashore, bark, wood, and foliage. In sparing doses, it lends the scent of a wet forest to the dryout note of a perfume, giving the whole a naturalness and a rich, earthy undertone, along with great fixation. Oakmoss requires restraint on the part of the perfumer; too much can ruin a creation.
Lidanisterion
Labdanum has been used since antiquity in incense and as an embalming agent. It is the resinous exudation of rockrose (Cistus ladaniferus), a small shrub that grows wild around the Mediterranean. Long ago, the oleoresin was collected by shepherds, who combed it from the fleece of sheep that had been browsing among cistus bushes; the first-century Roman writer Dioscorides mentions that it was combed from the beards and thighs of goats as well. In Crete, an instrument called a ladanisterion—a sort of double rake with leather thongs instead of teeth—was used to collect the resin. These days, the twigs and leaves of the plant are boiled in water to yield the aromatic gum. (The flowers, which have only a faint scent, are not exploited in perfumery.)
Labdanum has a pronounced sweet, herbaceous, balsamic odor, with a rich amber undertone found in few other essences. It works well with oakmoss, clary sage, all the citruses (especially bergamot), lavender, and opoponax, and it is particularly useful as a fixative in ambery blends. Labdanum is comforting and centering.
Green scents are fresh and leafy. They include tarragon, lavender concrete, clary sage concrete, flouve, elderflower, and deertongue.
Tarragon, with its sweet and spicy, aniselike scent, is one of my favorite oils; I use it as often as I can. The oil is a pale yellow-green liquid that turns dark yellow and viscous and more resinous as it ages. (Like the citruses, it is perishable and should be stored in the refrigerator.) Tarragon blends well with galbanum, lavender, oakmoss, angelica, clary sage, lime, fir, juniper, and bois de rose.
Edible essences are associated with food. This family includes vanilla, black tea, green tea, cognac, coffee, and cocoa.
Vanilla plants are orchids, vines that climb along tree trunks. Their seed pods exhale one of the finest odors in the vegetable kingdom. The culture and preparation of vanilla involves a kind of alchemy, however. The seed pod has no fragrance when it is gathered, but develops its characteristic odor as it ferments during the curing process, under the sorcery of sun and air. As the lower end of the pod begins to turn yellow, it releases a penetrating scent of bitter almonds. Cracks open in it, releasing a small quantity of its oil, which is known as balsam of vanilla. By degrees the color darkens, the flesh softens, and the true odor of vanilla begins to develop as the natural fermentation gradually progresses up the pod, which takes about a month. The essence is exuded in thick reddish drops. The pods are processed in various ways to give us vanilla oil and vanilla extract.
Vanilla
The choicest variety, Bourbon vanilla, comes from Madagascar. Its aroma is extremely rich and sweet, with a rather woody, tobacco-like, balsamic body note. Is there anyone who is not intoxicated by the smell of vanilla and the vanilla-saturated memories it evokes?
Cognac essence is produced by steam-distilling the lees left by the distillation of grape brandy. It has a delicate herbal aroma, with outstanding tenacity and great diffusive power. There are green and white varieties; I prefer the green, which is sweeter. Cognac works well with ambrette, bergamot, coriander, galbanum, lavender, clary sage, and ylang ylang. It gives a blend life, brilliance, and a fresh, fruity, natural note.
Here are suggestions for a set of base notes to get you started, along with two additional sets to consider purchasing as you can afford to and as you become eager to venture further afield. (I have marked with an asterisk those that are more costly.)
Basic set of base notes:
Benzoin Buy the liquid resin, not “tears.”
Labdanum
Oakmoss absolute
Patchouli
Tarragon
Vetiver
Second set of base notes:
Frankincense
Peru balsam
*Sandalwood The best comes from Mysore.
*Vanilla absolute My favorite is from Madagascar.
Very special third set of base notes:
*Ambrette seed
*Civet absolute
Cognac, green
Costus
*Spruce absolute, white and black
Tea absolute
Tobacco, blond
*Tonka bean
BLENDING CHORDS
Blending chords are the building blocks of the perfumery process. They are combinations of essences of similar tenacity—top, middle, or base—that are themselves blended together to make a perfume. In this chapter we are going to create a base chord that we will build upon in the next two chapters, layer by layer, until we have a perfume, which I have christened Alchemy. Later, in chapter 6, you will learn more about the overall principles of perfume composition so that you can begin experimenti
ng with your own blends.
A solid base chord usually contains at least two and no more than five ingredients; three is a good number to start with. In each chord, one ingredient should shine, with the others augmenting and supporting it. This base chord includes amber, which is in itself a base chord, but functions well used as a single note to add to other base chords. (Amber has nothing to do with the semiprecious fossilized resin of the same name. It originally referred to the scent of ambergris, which was also called ambra, but now an amber note is usually one that has been created from labdanum combined with styrax, vanilla, civet, or benzoin. A popular base note in the Oriental family of perfumes, ambers are powerful and popular fixatives in general.
Here is a recipe for a very beautiful and simple amber that can be worn alone or used as a base for a perfume:
AMBER
30 drops labdanum
120 drops benzoin
6 drops vanilla
Before you can measure the labdanum, you will probably need to heat it up so that it will flow; set the bottle of resin in a small bowl of very hot water (just boiled) until it liquefies. Then measure the drops into a small bottle and add the benzoin and vanilla. Secure the bottle cap tightly and shake to mix. Label this bottle “Amber.”
For our perfume called Alchemy, we are going to create a base chord that is sultry and rich:
