Cherry Plum

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Cherry plum is the small round fruit of Prunus cerasifera, also called myrobalan plum. It smells and tastes sweet-tart rather than jammy. Young fruit is sharply sour with green apple and lemon nuances. Ripe fruit keeps the tartness but gains sugar and a light warm-spice edge. A faint bitter-almond trace runs under it, the benzaldehyde character shared across the Prunus genus.

Scent Profile

Fruity leads. Specialty Produce describes the ripe fruit as 'a balanced, sweet-tart, tangy flavor with fruity, spice-filled nuances', and the fruit is what the note name points at. Sour is the other half of the identity and is stated for both stages of ripeness: 'high acidity when harvested young, contributing to a tart but refreshing sour flavor'. It is held below green plum's because that note is scored for unripe fruit only. Green and citrus come from the same sentence, which names 'green apple and lemon-like, fruity nuances'. Nutty is the bitter-almond benzaldehyde of the genus, named directly for this species by the Ham United Group flora guide: 'the lightly almond scented flowers' and 'the bark has a strong almond-like smell'. Below sit sweet_vanillic for the sugar the ripe fruit develops, floral and white_floral for the blossom, honeyed, and warm_spice for the unnamed 'spice-filled nuances'.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~4h lasting

Family Fruity

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

Origin

Prunus cerasifera is a small tree of the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia, widely planted in Europe as a hedge and as an ornamental in its purple-leaved forms. It is one of the two wild parents of the cultivated plum. The fruit ripens from yellow through red in mid-summer and is eaten fresh, cooked into sauces such as tkemali, or dried. No commercial cherry plum essential oil, absolute or CO2 extract was found for this note. In perfumery the note is built from fruity reconstruction materials, not from the plant.

Usage in Perfumery

Cherry plum is used as a top-to-heart fruity note in fresh and fruity-floral compositions. Its job is a tart red fruit that reads lighter and sharper than plum. It sits well against green and citrus tops, and against rose, white florals and light musks. Perfumers reach for it when plum would be too dark and heavy and cherry would be too syrupy.