Cantaloupe

Note Profile

Botanical 8 perfumes

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About

Cantaloupe is the heavy, orange-fleshed melon read at full ripeness. It smells fruity and ester-driven, with a honeyed weight underneath and a faint sulphurous edge. It is denser and less watery than watermelon, and it sits closer to overripe fruit than to cut-melon freshness.

Scent Profile

Cantaloupe opens fruity and ester-heavy, a bright ripe-melon burst carrying a green rind sharpness that evaporates fast. Underneath sits a honeyed depth and a soft, aquatic sweetness that keeps the note juicy rather than jammy. A sulphurous edge from the melon flesh shows at the threshold of ripeness and gives the note its characteristic overripe cast. It dries down musky, waxy and slightly diffuse, with the melon identity blurring as the esters go.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeTop · ~2h lasting

Family Fruity, Sweet & Gourmand

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

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ScentArt

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can build Cantaloupe from materials such as:

Ethyl 2-methylbutyrate apple · estery · plum
Ethyl butyrate pineapple · banana · ethereal
Trans-2,cis-6-nonadienal cucumber · melon · violet
Cis-6-nonenal cucumber · orris · melon
Ethyl isobutyrate ethereal · rummy · rum

Smell words come from published sources.

A given perfume with this note may use some of these, or something else.

Origin

Cucumis melo var. cantalupensis, the netted or rock melon. There is no cantaloupe essential oil. Perfumers build the note from the shared melon palette: cis-6-nonenal for the rind and flesh, and short-chain esters such as ethyl 2-methylbutanoate for the ripe burst. Cantaloupe is the version of that palette pushed towards ripeness rather than towards water.

Usage in Perfumery

Used as a fruity top note in summer, fruity and aquatic compositions. It pairs with green apple, cucumber, lychee and white peach. Pushed towards Calone it turns aquatic. Pushed towards ethyl maltol and vanillin it turns gourmand. Overdosed it turns cloying and can read as fermented.