Sweet Birch
Note Profile
About
The steam-distilled bark oil of sweet birch, also called black birch or cherry birch. It smells of wintergreen, because it is almost entirely the same molecule. An authentication study measured methyl salicylate at 93.24-99.84% of the oil and described the odour as 'papery, lightly weak wintergreen, sweet, and lightly woody'.
Scent Profile
Sweet Birch smells of wintergreen first, a cool, minty note that dominates the oil. A medicinal sweetness runs alongside it, closer to the ester than to sugar or vanilla, with a light spicy, phenolic edge. A thin, dry woody note and a papery quality sit underneath, from the bark the oil comes off.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
ScentArt
Materials That Can Make This Note
Perfumers can build Sweet Birch from materials such as:
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Natural extract Birch, sweet, oil cooling · minty · camphoraceous
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Methyl salicylate aromatic · rooty · eucalyptus
Smell words come from published sources.
Allergens perfumes with this note can list: Methyl Salicylate
A given perfume with this note may use some of these, or something else, and may or may not contain the allergens above.
Origin
Bark of Betula lenta L., a hardwood of eastern North America. The tree makes methyl salicylate in its bark, so scraped twigs smell of wintergreen without any processing. The oil is produced by macerating the bark in water and steam distilling it. Sweet birch was harvested hard for oil of wintergreen until synthetic methyl salicylate arrived in the 1950s and 60s, by which point the tree was close to endangered.
Usage in Perfumery
A minty-sweet lift used where a fresh medicinal edge is wanted. It appears in fougeres and in anything reaching for a root-beer or liniment reference. Most material sold under this name is not sweet birch: the authentication study found none of 27 commercial samples carried genuine B. lenta markers. It detected wintergreen oil, synthetic methyl salicylate and castor oil instead.
Similar Notes
Perfumes featuring Sweet Birch
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Sweet Birch appears prominently.
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