Balsamic Vinegar

Note Profile

Prepared

About

Balsamic vinegar keeps the sharp acetic top of vinegar but adds a whole aged layer on top of it. Cooked grape must brings real sweetness. Years in a sequence of wooden casks bring wood, caramel, prune and vanilla. It is sourer than a fruit note and sweeter than plain vinegar. Read the confidence_note before using this: the word 'balsamic' in perfumery means something else entirely.

Scent Profile

Sour leads and every source names acidity first, but it is set at 0.80 rather than the 0.98 of plain vinegar, because both trade sources insist the acidity is balanced against sweetness and one reports that sensory panels score the sweetest samples lowest on perceived acidity. Fruity is next: syrupy fruit in one source, dried prune, fig and berry in the other, so this is cooked and dried fruit rather than fresh. Honeyed is named as a word, not inferred, and carries the cooked-must sweetness. Sweet_vanillic covers the caramel and vanilla the oak cask contributes. Dry_woody is the 'typical woody overtones stemming from the wooden casks' that the trade body puts in its own organoleptic standard. Under the line, boozy carries the wine and fermentation origin, and a small floral reflects the one source that lists flowers between honey and syrupy fruit.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~4h lasting

Family Fruity, Sweet & Gourmand

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

Reduced and fermented grape must, aged in a graded series of wooden casks. The trade source names oak, chestnut and cherry, and attributes vanillin to the oak, tannin and berry lift to the chestnut, and benzaldehyde stone-fruit tones to the cherry. The barrels are why the profile is not just vinegar. No perfumer's account of using a balsamic-vinegar accord could be found, so the evidence here is food-science organoleptic description of the foodstuff.

Usage in Perfumery

A sour gourmand note. Attested on 19 Fragrantica entries and nothing on Parfumo. Fragrantica files it under Resins and balsams, which is a misfiling driven by the word 'balsamic'.