Santolina
Note Profile
About
Santolina is cotton lavender, and it does not smell like lavender. Both trade sources that describe the oil put it with the Artemisia herbs instead: strong, dry, camphoraceous and bitter, sharp enough to read as slightly medicinal. It opens on a chamomile-and-yarrow top with a fleeting red-berry lift, then settles into a green, bitter, faintly boozy herbal dry-down.
Scent Profile
Aromatic herbal dominates and is the whole identity: dry, bitter, camphoraceous herb of the Artemisia kind. Cooling mentholic carries the camphor edge and the light mint that artemisia ketone contributes. Green follows, the dry-grass and green-herbal bouquet of the heart and dry-down. Boozy sits under that, the bitter liqueur-like character Hermitage names in the dry-down. Below the 0.25 line, a hay-like dry-grass tobacco facet, a fleeting red-berry fruitiness, a honeyed touch from the artemisia ketone, faint florality and a small dry-woody, earthy floor.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
Origin
Santolina chamaecyparissus, a low silver-grey Mediterranean shrub of the daisy family with yellow button flowers. The essential oil is steam-distilled from the flowering herb. Hermitage Oils names artemisia ketone as the major constituent at about a third of the oil, and says that in isolated form it "exudes herbaceous, berry, honey and light mint qualities". The common name cotton lavender describes the foliage, not the smell.
Usage in Perfumery
A minor perfumery oil, traded by small houses rather than the majors. It works where a fougere or chypre wants bitter camphoraceous herb without lavender's floral roundness, and it will read as wormwood-adjacent next to sage, artemisia and immortelle. Used sparingly: it is sharp and penetrating and takes over a top note quickly.
Similar Notes
Perfumes featuring Santolina
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Santolina appears prominently.
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