Pine Tar

Note Profile

Prepared 16 perfumes

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About

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.

Scent Profile

Pine Tar smells thickly of black smoke, closer to creosote than to a light char, with a sharp, medicinal edge. A balsamic, hot-resin body sits behind the smoke, smooth rather than acrid. A tarry, cured-hide leather note runs through it, over the dry, burnt wood the tar was made from. A faint balsamic sweetness rounds off the smoke and keeps it from reading as pure burn.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeBase · ~30h lasting

Family Woody & Earthy, Amber · Musk · Leather

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can make Pine Tar from this natural extract.

Natural extract Pine tar oil, rectified

Smell words come from published sources.

A given perfume with this note may use this material, or something else.

Origin

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.

Usage in Perfumery

Perfumers use pine tar in base accords that need a burnt or smoky character: leather, incense, chypre, tobacco and masculine fragrances. PerfumersWorld calls the rectified oil the smoothest of the tars next to cade and birch tar, and sweeter than both. So it is the tar to use when a composition needs smoke without the sharpness of birch. It is used diluted to 10% or 1%, because tar oils can overpower a fragrance.