Golden Delicious Apple

Note Profile

Botanical

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About

Golden Delicious is the low-acid, honey-toned end of the apple range. Growers describe the fruit as mild and sweet, with honey-like notes and very little acidity. Its two main aroma esters are butyl acetate and hexyl acetate. Hexyl acetate smells green and fruity, close to pear, with a banana side. The note reads as ripe yellow apple flesh: sweet, soft-edged, faintly floral, with the green kept to skin level.

Scent Profile

Golden Delicious apple smells of ripe yellow apple flesh, sweet and soft-edged rather than crisp and sharp. Its green side sits at skin level, not deep in the sap, closer to pear than to a sour green apple. Honey is what sets it apart from tarter apples, with almost no sharp acidity to cut it. A faint floral note runs alongside it, with a soft sweetness underneath.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeTop · ~2h lasting

Family Fruity

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 Golden Delicious Apple from materials such as:

Butyl acetate banana · pear · ethereal

Smell words come from published sources.

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

Origin

The fruit of Malus domestica cv. Golden Delicious, a chance seedling found in Clay County, West Virginia in the 1890s and now one of the most planted apples in the world. There is no Golden Delicious extract in perfumery. The note is built from apple esters. Butyl acetate and hexyl acetate make up more than 60% of the fruit's volatile emission.

Usage in Perfumery

Used where a fruity opening needs sweetness without bite, in gourmand, floral-fruity and orchard builds. It sits in the top of the pyramid, as in DKNY Golden Delicious. On 2026-10-10, one perfume database listed 19 perfumes with it. It is a softer, less sour apple than Red Apple.