Carolina Reaper

Note Profile

Botanical

About

The world's hottest chilli, used in perfumery as an idea. The pod's actual smell is fruity, tropical and green. The heat is a contact sensation and does not reach the nose.

Scent Profile

Fruity leads because the trade source names the fruits: a 'habanero-like fruitiness - mango, apricot, and papaya'. Tropical and green are held level and just behind, because the same sentence pairs them and neither source ranks one over the other. Tropical is 'faintly tropical' from Premiere Peau plus the mango and papaya. Green is the 'vegetal green-pepper undertone' and the 'green pyrazine note', which is the one quality both a trade glossary and a grower agree is sharp. Floral rests on the grower's first-hand account of cutting a fresh pod: 'a floral pungency fills the air', 'perfumy, floral napalm'. It is a vivid line from one community source, so it is scored well under the fruit and given a spread. Fresh_spice is the peppery dryness, not the heat. Both sources say the heat is not olfactory, so warm_spice and nothing here scores the Scoville number. Sulphurous is left at zero with a spread: green peppers commonly carry it, but neither source said so and asserting an absence and asserting a presence are both wrong here.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~4h lasting

Family Fruity, Green & Aromatic

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

Origin

Capsicum chinense cultivar 'Carolina Reaper', bred in South Carolina and certified the hottest chilli in 2013. No commercial perfumery extract exists. Premiere Peau states why: capsaicin would be a skin irritant at any useful concentration, and it is not volatile, so it would contribute nothing to the smell anyway.

Usage in Perfumery

A conceptual note. Premiere Peau describes the few compositions that invoke it as 'built from pyrazine-fruity-tropical accords for the aroma and from peppery materials (pink pepper, shishito reconstruction) for the dryness, without actually using capsaicin'. Attested on 3 fragrances at Fragrantica, none at Parfumo. Buyers expect heat and the note does not deliver it, which is the interesting part.