Calafate

Note Profile

Molecule

About

Calafate is the berry of Berberis microphylla, the Patagonian barberry. No extract of it exists. The one trade source is explicit that no essential oil, absolute or CO2 of the species is sold, so a calafate note is an accord built to evoke a dark tart berry.

Scent Profile

Fruity leads and it is the only thing stated about the berry itself: tart, dark, denser than blueberry. Sour carries the tart, astringent, tannic, inky reading, which the source repeats in three separate sentences and is the facet that separates this from a ripe berry. Green is the cis-3-hexenol leaf snap of the wild bush, named in the construction and supported by hexanal and nonanal in the proxy species. Below the naming bar: honeyed for damascenone jam, aromatic_herbal for the bitter berberine undertone, sulphurous because the source says less sulphurous than blackcurrant, which asserts a little rather than none. Citrus is held far under the published barberry note's 0.40, because no source gives calafate a citrus reading and the tartness here is described as tannic instead. Every number is wide because one trade page is the whole evidence base and none of it measures this species.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeTop · ~2h lasting

Family Fruity

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

Origin

Berberis microphylla, a spiny shrub of southern Chile and Argentina. The fruit is dark blue-black. The same source reports no analytical volatile work on this species. It cites GC-MS-olfactometry on the related Berberis crataegina, where nonanal, hexanal and linalool lead, and offers that only as a proxy.

Usage in Perfumery

Fragrantica attests the term once. Parfumo does not carry it. Construction given by the source is ethyl-2-methylbutyrate for ripe density, damascenone for jammy depth, cis-3-hexenol for the green snap of the bush, and a trace of blackcurrant bud absolute. The source says the result reads as a fictional berry, sitting between cassis and sloe.