Karo-Karounde
Note Profile
About
Karo-karounde is a narcotic West African white flower with cocoa inside it. The floral body reads as gardenia richness, jasmine sweetness and the waxy warmth of orange blossom, and underneath sits an unexpected chocolate-orange depth with a faint bitter-almond undertone. That cocoa register is what makes it a note of its own rather than another jasmine.
Scent Profile
Intensely floral and narcotic: a broad white-floral body of gardenia and jasmine with a general floral sweetness around it, over the waxy warmth one supplier hears as orange blossom. Cutting through it is a cocoa depth - chocolate-orange, read as cacao by a second supplier - which is the note's signature. A spicy floral warmth runs alongside, with ripening-fruit sweetness, a honeyed edge, a faint bitter-almond nuttiness, and quiet woody, herbal and animalic tails.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
Origin
The flowers of Leptactina senegambica, a wild shrub of the Fouta Djalon mountains of Guinea, in the Rubiaceae - the family of gardenia and coffee. Early European botanists mistook it for a jasmine. The absolute was solvent-extracted from freshly picked flowers and fewer than 50 kilos a year were ever made; African extraction has effectively stopped, so most material now sold under the name is a natural reconstruction built to the same profile.
Usage in Perfumery
A heavy white-floral heart material used in traces. It goes into tuberose and gardenia accords, into heavy oriental florals, and anywhere a narcotic white flower needs depth rather than more sweetness. It pairs with ylang-ylang, jasmine, orange flower absolute, tuberose, styrax and isoeugenol. It appeared in Cartier Panthere, Estee Lauder Pleasures and Duchaufour's Timbuktu.
Similar Notes
Perfumes featuring Karo-Karounde
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Karo-Karounde appears prominently.
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