Note Profile
Pine tar is the dark, viscous oil left when pine wood is burned without air. It smells of thick black smoke, creosote and hot resin, with a phenolic bite and a leathery edge. A balsamic, faintly coniferous sweetness runs under the smoke and keeps it from reading as pure burn.
Pine tar is dominated by smoky, with thick creosote-like black smoke and a phenolic, medicinal sharpness. Amber_resinous sits behind it as a balsamic, hot-resin body that the sources call smooth. Leather comes through as a tarry, cured-hide facet, and dry_woody as the pyrolysed conifer wood itself. A sweet_vanillic burnt sweetness rounds the smoke, which is what two trade sources mean by calling this the most palatable tar. Below those, earthy and animalic depth and a faint green coniferous trace remain.
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
CAS 8011-48-1
Pine tar oil (IFRA NCS M2.24). The only pine tar material held, and it is rectified; the note describes the destructive distillate itself, so the link is sound but the grade is not a choice we made.
Pine tar comes from the destructive distillation of pine wood, usually the resin-rich stumps and roots of Pinus species. The wood is heated in a sealed kiln so it pyrolyses rather than burns, and the tar is collected as a thick black liquid. Pyrolysis creates the guaiacol, creosol and phenol compounds that carry the smell. This is what separates it from pine and pine needle oil, which are steam-distilled and never heated to pyrolysis. Perfumery grades are usually rectified to strip the harshest fractions.
Perfumers use pine tar in base accords for smoke, leather and burnt-wood effects. PerfumersWorld calls the rectified oil the smoothest of the tars next to cade and birch tar, and sweeter, so it is reached for when a composition needs tar without the sharpness of birch. It builds campfire, incense and gothic-leather accords, and it pairs with labdanum, styrax, vetiver and the conifer oils. It is dosed in traces because it stains and dominates.
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Pine Tar appears prominently.
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