Darjeeling Tea
Note Profile
About
Darjeeling is the black tea whose defining smell is muscatel: a grape-like, sweet, slightly musky note that no other tea is credited with. It sits over spring-leaf green and a light wildflower floral, with a bright astringent lift that one perfumer reads as champagne. It is lighter and fruitier than Assam or Ceylon.
Scent Profile
Fruity is muscatel and it is the lead in both sources. Wild Veil opens its list with muscatel; Golden Tips calls it the distinctive muscatel flavour of the misty Himalayan foothills. Muscatel is Muscat grape, so fruity is the facet, not tropical. Green is Wild Veil's spring greens and matches the lightly oxidised first flush. Tobacco_hay is the dried tea leaf itself, and it is the one number here that no source states in words - see the confidence note. Floral covers Wild Veil's wildflower overtones and Golden Tips' floral undertones, two independent sources on the same facet. Sour is the delicate astringency both sources name, plus the fizzy, champagne-like brightness Wild Veil describes. Under those, honeyed is the sweetness Wild Veil reports, boozy is the champagne read, and dry_woody is the tea-leaf tannin. Smoky is held: nothing in the evidence smokes, but a black tea rarely reaches zero there.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
Origin
Camellia sinensis grown in the Himalayan foothills of West Bengal, India. Golden Tips Tea attributes the muscatel character to that high-altitude terroir. The material reaching perfumery is a tea absolute or tincture of the leaf. Wild Veil Perfume builds a single-note perfume from first-flush Darjeeling, the lightly oxidised spring picking.
Usage in Perfumery
A tea note for bright, transparent compositions rather than the smoky or leathery tea accords. The muscatel gives a perfumer a fruit that is not a fruit note, so it can carry sweetness into a green or floral structure without reading as jam.
Similar Notes
Perfumes featuring Darjeeling Tea
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Darjeeling Tea appears prominently.
No perfumes featuring this note have been reviewed yet. Check back soon.