Green

Birch Leaf

Note Profile

Botanical 22 perfumes

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About

Birch Leaf is a green, herbaceous perfumery base and not an extract of a leaf. What perfumers buy under the name is Givaudan's Birch Leaf Givco 166, a reconstruction of the smell of birch twigs heated on a sauna stove. It is potent and diffusive, and it carries a light spice edge alongside the green.

Scent Profile

Sharply green and herbaceous, the smell of crushed foliage rather than of wood or bark. Under the green sits a fresh spice the maker's resellers name as cardamom and coriander seed, and a thin dry woody edge from the twig. A faint dry-leaf tea nuance shows late. There is no smoke, no leather and no wintergreen in it.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeHeart · ~4h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic

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ScentArt

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Birch Leaf is usually built as an accord, a blend of several materials, rather than made from one.

Origin

No standard commercial Betula pendula leaf absolute exists. In the early 1980s Roman Kaiser's team at Givaudan studied the fragrance of heated birch twigs in a traditional Scandinavian sauna and built Birch Leaf Givco 166 from it. Givaudan reformulated the base as version 166/2 in December 2019, and it is resold in Europe as a speciality, often pre-diluted in DPG.

Usage in Perfumery

A top-to-heart green modifier. It gives woody and fougere compositions lift and an outdoor freshness, and it is the birch-leaf accord in Calvin Klein's Escape for Men. It is strong: a reseller describes it as effective from the smallest traces through to 1 per cent, so it is normally evaluated as a dilution.