by Mandy Aftel
Here are some groups of top notes:
Citrus essences are tart, light, and fresh. They include bergamot, pink grapefruit, lime, lemon, blood orange, sweet orange, bitter orange, tangerine, and petitgrain. The best citrus oils for perfumery are cold-pressed from the peel instead of distilled. Citrus essences reach the smeller’s nose immediately and directly, so differences in varieties are easy to grasp and interesting to play with.
Sweet orange, in the superior varieties that we now cultivate, was first brought to the West from southern China by the Portuguese around 1520. The sweet orange was introduced to the New World along with the lemon on Columbus’s second voyage. From there they spread to the West Indian islands and to Florida. Depending on how and where it is expressed, sweet orange oil can range in color from pale to almost brownish orange. It has a sweet, light, fresh odor reminiscent of the scratched peel. Sweet orange is used in perfumery as a vibrant, simple top note and is my least favorite of the expressed orange choices available to the perfumer.
Bitter orange trees supply the perfumer with an encyclopedia of scents, as we have seen—neroli and orange flower absolute from the blossoms, petitgrain oil and eau de brouts from the leaves and twigs, and, from the peel of the fruit, bitter orange oil. As always, Arctander captures the nuances of bitter orange oil best: “The odor is very peculiar, fresh and yet ‘bitter’ in the sense of ‘dry,’ but with a rich and lasting sweet undertone. There are notes which remind of bergamot, grapefruit and sweet orange, but overall, the odor is distinctly different from that of other citrus oils. It is a different type of freshness, a peculiar floral undertone … with good tenacity.” Bitter orange is dry and elegant and blends well with almost any other note.
Grapefruit oil is a relatively new essence, because the grapefruit itself has been in existence for only the past four hundred years, and until the beginning of the twentieth century it was a rarity. My favorite grapefruit oil is cold-pressed from the peel of pink grapefruit. It is yellowish in color, with a fresh, citrusy, rather sweet odor—lighter and yet somehow more complicated than that of white grapefruit. Grapefruit is uplifting and reviving and blends well with basil, cedarwood, lavender, and ylang ylang.
Blood orange is known for its unique red flesh and its intense taste. The oil pressed from its rind has a rich orange aroma with overtones of raspberry and strawberry. I adore it for the voluptuousness it lends to the top of a perfume. Even more than the other orange essences, it is prized for its antidepressant properties.
Tangerine essence is an infinitely better choice for perfumery than mandarin orange. Like the fruit, the oil is orange-colored, with a fresh, sweet odor and no dryness. It is lighter than blood orange but sweeter than bitter orange.
Petitgrain oil is yet another product of the bitter orange tree Citrus aurantium, this time from the green twigs and leaves. (Petitgrains are also made from the leaves and twigs of the lemon, lime, clementine, and mandarin trees.) Petitgrain oil has a pleasant, fresh odor reminiscent of orange flowers, with a slightly woody-herbaceous undertone. With its high odor intensity, petitgrain needs a light touch, but used with restraint it adds a refreshing note to perfumes.
Bergamot trees grow almost exclusively along the narrow coastal strip of the Italian region of Calabria. Their inedible fruit is lemon yellow and a little smaller than a sweet orange, about three inches in diameter. The oil is produced by expressing the peel of the nearly ripe fruit and is familiar to most people as the scent that dominates Earl Grey tea. When freshly pressed, it is green, but it fades to yellow or pale brown as it ages, particularly when exposed to sunlight, and the scent loses its radiant top note. It has an extremely rich, sweet lemon-orange scent that evolves into a more floral, freesialike scent, ending in a herbaceous-balsamic dryout. Although it is a citrus oil, it does not have the tang of the lemon or orange essences. In my custom perfume business, bergamot is the most frequently chosen top note. It lifts a depressed mood without sedating and soothes jangled nerves.
Bergamot
Lime trees are thorny, bushy evergreens with handsome dark green leaves so fragrant that they have been used to perfume the water in finger bowls. The blossoms are solvent-extracted to yield the coolly elegant middle-note linden blossom. The rind of the fruit is cold-pressed to yield a greenish liquid that captures its characteristically fresh, rich, and sweet odor. Used moderately, it is mellow and “perfumey” and is a good choice to finish off blends that are too sweet or too floral. Try blending it with angelica, nutmeg, and neroli.
Lemon oils, as I have mentioned, are problematic for perfumery, and I prefer to use litsea cubeba when I need a lemon note. The cleaning-products industry has made synthetic versions of this scent so ubiquitous that when I present the natural essence to perfume clients, they often identify it as Pledge. Smell is uniquely connected to memory, and, like a computer disk, it can become corrupted and no longer able to accept new information.
Still, many people find the smell of lemon refreshing and clarifying. Good lemon oil is yellowish, with the light, fresh, sweet odor of the ripe peel; it has a higher odor intensity than lime or grapefruit, but it should carry no hint of harshness. It blends well with cardamom, chamomile, and ginger.
Green top notes include spearmint, cucumber, galbanum, and wintergreen.
Spearmint is produced by steam distillation of the flowering tops of the plants. It is a pale oil with a warm, green, herbaceous odor, penetrating and powerful and truly reminiscent of the odor of the crushed herb. Spearmint is one of those oils that improve with age—one-year-old oils being finer and having a more characteristic minty fragrance than those that are freshly distilled. Spearmint is stimulating and refreshing and blends well with jasmine, basil, grapefruit, and vetiver. Its cheerful scent does wonders to lift a heavy composition.
Spearmint
Calbanum oil is steam-distilled from the soft resins of the Ferula family, which are used as a base note. (Several species of Ferula are in the parsley family.) It presents an intensely green, fresh, leafy odor that moves into a dry, woody dryout with a balsamic, barklike character. Arctander likens it to green peppers or tossed green salad. Galbanum’s complicated intensity gives floral blends a leafy quality.
Fir needle oil is derived from the needles of a true fir and has the evocative scent of a fresh Christmas tree. It is refreshingly balsamic, with a powerful pine scent and a peculiar jamlike fruity-balsamic undertone. There are many kinds of pine, fir, and spruce needle oils, but Abies alba is the one I prefer. I use it frequently, blending it with other pine or fir oils as well as with oakmoss, citrus, labdanum, rosemary, patchouli, and juniper berry.
Spury top notes include black pepper, green pepper, ginger, clove, coriander, nutmeg, juniper berry, and cardamom.
Coriander is a pale or colorless oil distilled from the seeds of the cilantro plant, but instead of the leaves’ strong herbaceous smell, it has a pleasant, sweet, woody-peppery aroma. Coriander is uplifting, refreshing, and stimulating, and has the same effect on a perfume blend; it is a good choice to provide life and lift to a heavy composition. Coriander works well with jasmine, frankincense, cinnamon, and bergamot.
Cardamom has been in use as a spice since ancient times, and it has been distilled into an essential oil since the mid-sixteenth century. It is almost colorless at first, but gradually darkens on exposure to daylight. Cardamom greets you with a spicy odor reminiscent of eucalyptus, but softer, and evolves into a woody, balsamic, almost floral dryout. Cardamom contributes spiciness to a blend, but also a warm, sweet note that floral heart notes welcome. More tenacious than most top notes, cardamom blends well with coriander, frankincense, rose, geranium, and litsea cubeba.
Nutmeg was highly valued by the ancient Romans, who sometimes used the whole nuts as currency. It yields a pale oil, yellowish or almost transparent, with a light, fresh, warm-spicy aroma. In good specimens, the dryout is somewhat woody but remains warm and sweet. It is useful in spicy perfumes or to bring a sweet and warm top note to any blend. Ex
periment blending nutmeg with black pepper, coriander, galbanum, and frankincense.
Nutmeg
Black pepper was known to the Greeks as far back as the fourth century B.C. and was highly prized by them and other peoples of antiquity. Like gold, it was used as a medium of exchange and an article of tribute. It remains one of the most important spices for perfumery. The not-quite-ripe peppercorns are dried, crushed, and steam-distilled to produce an almost transparent oil that becomes more viscous with age. It smells like the spice, with a dry, fresh, woody, warm-spicy aroma. Its extremely high odor intensity requires a careful hand, just as in cooking. A tiny amount is all that is needed to lend a spicy note and an edge to a blend. Black pepper is thought to stimulate the mind and to warm the indifferent heart.
Ginger oil is produced by steam-distilling the dried and freshly ground rhizomes of the Zingiber officinale plant. The first whiff, which resembles coriander mixed with orange and lemon, gives way to the characteristically warm, spicy odor of the root, with a sweet and heavy undertone. Ginger blends well with bois de rose, cedarwood, coriander, rose, and neroli, but it has high odor intensity and should be used sparingly.
Flowery top notes are mostly derived from flowers, of course, although bois de rose is an exception. Also included are lavender, mimosa, and davana, an Indian flower with a dry, bitter floral odor.
Bois de rose, or rosewood, distilled from the chipped wood of the Aniba rosaeodora, has a refreshing, sweet, woody, spicy, somewhat rosy odor. It makes a good all-purpose top note that blends particularly well with coriander, geranium, sandalwood, vetiver, and frankincense.
Lavender—where do I start? The essential oil is distilled from the flowering tops. Few people are unfamiliar with its fresh, sweet fragrance, which starts out herbaceous, with a hint of eucalyptus, and becomes more flowery as it evolves. True lavender oil is still unequaled as a perfume ingredient that blends well with almost any other essence. (Some varieties, however, have a harsh note and should be avoided in perfumery.) Lavender is strengthening, refreshing, and calming.
Dry fragrances, like dry wines, lack sweetness; they are distinguished by woody notes along with grassy and ferny nuances. They include cabreuva and cedarwood.
Lavender
Cabreuva is distilled from scraps left from processing various species of Myrocarpus trees, which grow wild in South America. It is a pale yellow, somewhat viscous oil with a complex scent—sweet, woody, and delicate, with a dry floral background. Cabreuva has greater tenacity than most top notes, but dosed with a light hand, it lends a distinct note reminiscent of sandalwood and rose.
Virginia cedarwood is the wood used in lead pencils, and the oil is distilled from sawdust produced by pencil factories. Its scent starts out mild and pleasant, almost sweet, and somewhat balsamic, like the wood itself, then becomes drier, woodier, and less balsamic as it moves toward the dryout note. A related variety of interest to the perfumer is Atlas cedarwood from Morocco.
Note: Although eucalyptus, tea tree, and peppermint are popular aromatherapy oils and qualify as top notes, their strong, medicinal odors make them unsuitable for perfumery. They will overwhelm any blend to which they are added.
Here is a set of top notes to get started with, followed by suggestions for future acquisitions.
Basic set of top notes:
Bergamot
Bitter orange I prefer expressed or cold-pressed to distilled.
Bois de rose Also known as rosewood.
Cedarwood I like “Virginia” better than the “Atlas” variety.
Lime Mexican is best. Use cold-pressed or expressed and not distilled.
Pepper, black
Second set of top notes:
Coriander
Fir I like the species Abies alba best.
Grapefruit White and pink grapefruit smell very different; buy pink.
Lavender Buy real lavender, not lavandin. I prefer the French varieties.
Nutmeg
Very special third set of top notes:
Blood orange
Cabreuva
Galbanum oil
CREATING FOR CHORDS
The fugitive, evanescent top notes are the last to be added to a blend. Like late-arriving guests, they need to fit in with the already chosen elements in the perfume and avoid conflict. By temperament, this is easy for most of them except the ones with strong odor intensity. If heart notes are courtship and base notes are long-married permanence, top notes are a one-night stand. Their scent tends to stay near the top of the perfume, drifting only faintly into the middle notes, which makes them inherently easy to work with. With the major creative statements already made, however, there is less room to work and a greater chance of making a big mistake.
Schimmel & Co.’s itinerant lavender distillery
Creating a radiant top chord comes from familiarity with the nuances of each individual note. Learning to smell the evolution of a top note is akin to trying to watch flowers bloom. It is a process of subtle change that requires a meditative consciousness. Take, for example, the orange-scented notes: blood orange, bitter orange, sweet orange, tangerine, mandarin. They have more in common than not, yet the choice of one or another of them will have a subtle but definite effect upon the opening statement of the perfume. When you smell each of them, you smell for shades of difference: blood orange is the most voluptuous and rich; bitter orange is refined and slightly floral; sweet orange is just that, sweet; tangerine is warmer and rounder than mandarin, which tends to be a bit dry.
To finish Alchemy, the perfume we have been constructing, I have deliberately chosen very friendly and congenial notes that will readily marry with the base and heart notes. The citrus notes will add a light and fresh top chord to our beautiful floral heart and our powdery base. The only “difficult” ingredient is black pepper, with its high odor intensity, which should be added last. Add a drop of it, thoroughly stir it in, wait fifteen minutes, then put a drop on your skin and smell it to decide whether the blend needs another drop.
We need approximately eighteen drops of a top chord:
10 drops bergamot
6 drops bitter orange
2 drops black pepper
Drop each ingredient into the blend, making sure to smell after each new essence is added in order to comprehend the evolving changes. Pay careful attention to how the black pepper sharpens and intensifies the top notes.
Here are some other top-note chords to try. As before, the dominant note appears first.
Citrusy: pink grapefruit, bergamot, bitter orange
Green: fir, spearmint, lime
Spicy: coriander, tangerine, black pepper
Flowery: lavender, pink grapefruit, bois de rose
Dry: cedarwood, juniper berry, coriander
6
An Octave of Odors The Art of Composition
In the kingdom of smells, everything is either bliss or torture, sometimes so subtly blended that often I find myself, when the many strands of a supposedly simple odor are trapped in my palpitating nostrils, actually listening to it, as carefully as if I were unraveling a symphony’s sonorous phrases.
—Colette, “Fragrance”86
85 I WAS STRUCK by the paradox implicit in a recent issue of National Geographic87 that was devoted to perfume. The sumptuous photographs that accompanied the article, page after page, were of natural perfume ingredients and raw materials—for example, a lush two-page spread in which “dew-kissed petals of damask roses spill from practiced fingers in Bulgaria’s Valley of Roses.” The process the article explored, however—the search for a custom perfume—seemed to have nothing much to do with the materials depicted. Instead, the author responded to a series of questions about her style and self-image (Yves St. Laurent, not Christian Lacroix; red wine over white). Her answers, she explained, would be distilled into what is known in the perfume business as a brief, a précis of the perfume’s concept (“A fragrance that does not shout. Elegant, crisp, sophisticated”) and target customer (“Generation X,
ladies who lunch, or, in this case, me”). For the article, each of five perfumers vied to create a scent for her. If she had been a brand name like Christian Dior in search of a new perfume product, the competitors would have been rival perfume suppliers, such as International Flavors and Fragrances or Quest International.
I’ve had an opportunity to observe how a well-respected perfumer does his creative work at one of the big fragrance houses in New York City. We gave each other the problem of building a perfume around a certain natural essence. I assigned him Tasmanian boronia, the staggeringly beautiful raspberry-toned floral, and he assigned me cinnamon, with the caveat “No potpourri.” He was referring to cinnamon’s spicy ubiquitousness in bowls of dried herbs and spices that appear around the holidays.
As I have mentioned, cinnamon is an extremely difficult scent to work with because it is so strongly associated with certain foods and holidays. It is difficult to wrest free from those associations so that its warm spiciness can be smelled anew. Nor is cinnamon a scent of which I am particularly fond, so I found my assignment very challenging indeed. I decided to make its sharp, sweet, woody, and spicy odor compete against essences that were equally as strong, like ambrette, clove, green pepper, and castoreum. To stand up to the intensity of these powerful personalities, I decided on a vanilla-scented base note and a full-bodied and sweet floral heart. I blended from the bottom up, figuring out the proportions as I went.
After thinking for a while, the commercial perfumer simply wrote down a list of essences with numbers in front of them: 5 ml geranium, 3 ml oakmoss, 6 ml lemon, and so on. He had planned out, in his head, what essences would go into the blend, and exactly how much of each. The formula was given to a technician, who followed it exactly to assemble an undiluted perfume oil; this oil was then mixed with perfume alcohol in a 12 percent solution.