Flouve

Note Profile

Botanical

About

The coumarin-rich absolute of sweet vernal grass. It smells of freshly cut and baled hay, sweetened with honey and dried fruit, with mild tobacco and a gingerbread edge.

Scent Profile

Tobacco_hay leads and both sources name it first: freshly cut hay from one, baled hay from the other, the coumarin character in each case. Sweet_vanillic sits under it as the soft vanillic sweetness of coumarin, not a sugar sweetness. Honeyed is named outright by Eden Botanicals. Aromatic_herbal is close behind, because Eden calls the odour herbaceous twice and once qualifies it as very powerful. Fruity is the dried sweet fruit Rising Sun names as raisin and fig. Warm_spice is the gingerbread facet, and it comes from one source only, so its spread is the widest here. Green and powdery sit below the naming line: green is the grass Rising Sun mentions, powdery is inferred from coumarin and nobody wrote it down.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~34h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather, Sweet & Gourmand, Green & Aromatic

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

What this is made of

Flouve absolute

A natural extract

CAS 68916-09-6

Anthoxanthum odoratum (IFRA NCS E2.1, leaf/herb). The note's own first line is 'the coumarin-rich ABSOLUTE of sweet vernal grass', so the absolute is named by the note and the oil rows are not.

How the layers join

Origin

Flouve is the French name for sweet vernal grass, Anthoxanthum odoratum. The absolute is solvent-extracted from the dried grass. Coumarin is the named driver of the odour and it is liberated when the grass dries, so the note is a product of drying rather than of the living plant. It is sold as its own material by natural-materials houses, usually diluted, because the neat absolute is very strong.

Usage in Perfumery

Use it as a base note for hay, fougere and tobacco accords. Both trade sources call it powerful and very tenacious, so it is dosed low. It carries gourmand facets that let it sit under vanilla, tonka and dried-fruit notes as well as under green and herbal ones.