Lavish
Extrait
Oakcha
Favourite
Liquidambar
Note Profile
About
A rich sweet-balsamic resin with a cinnamon spine, faint florals and a leathery, animalic base.
Scent Profile
Liquidambar smells rich, sweet and balsamic, close to incense, with a cinnamon spine running through the resin. A leathery, animalic base sits underneath, castoreum-like in the darker forms. Faint florals show through, the reason it turns up in lilac and mimosa work. A honeyed stickiness and a faint smoky edge round it out, though the sweetness stays balsamic rather than truly vanillic.
ScentWheel
Breadthmedium
EnvelopeBase · ~34h lasting
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
ScentArt
Seen in
Tap a perfume to see where Liquidambar sits in it. The rest of the picture goes grey
Origin
The balsam of the Liquidambar tree. Bark is stripped and the sapwood cut, and the crude oozes out and is collected. Liquidambar orientalis gives Levant or Asian storax, the material most of the trade evidence here describes. Liquidambar styraciflua, American sweetgum, gives a different one, and one trade reviewer is explicit that the three commercial styrax types 'each smells different'. The crude is worked up into a resinoid, an absolute, or steam-distilled to an essential oil, and those three do not smell alike.
Usage in Perfumery
A base note used as a modifier rather than a lead, as Eden Botanicals puts it, 'as a component of a composition, rather than on its own'. It builds floral accords, lilac, hyacinth, apple blossom, carnation, mimosa, violet and hawthorn, and it gives sweetness and tenacity to lavender and fougere bases. The resin forms are used in oriental, gourmand, amber and leather bases. 27 Fragrantica placements and 15 Parfumo placements across 13 brands.
Similar Notes
Perfumes featuring Liquidambar
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Liquidambar appears prominently.
