Sweet Grass
Note Profile
About
The dried, coumarin-sweet hay note of Hierochloe odorata. It is sweet and tenacious, with a jam-like fig and prune facet, honey, and a whisper of tobacco and gingerbread.
Scent Profile
Tobacco_hay leads: new-mown hay, the coumarin character the sources all name first. Sweet_vanillic sits just under it and is the sweetness those same sources call powerful and suave, not a sugar sweetness but the soft vanillic side of coumarin. Fruity is the jam-like fig and prune facet, reported independently by two suppliers, and it is what makes this read as preserved fruit rather than plain dried grass. Honeyed follows. Aromatic_herbal is the faint herbaceousness the on-species source names. Green is low and deliberately so, because the grass only smells once it has dried. Below those, small amounts of powdery, warm_spice for the gingerbread edge, nutty and lactonic.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
Origin
Sweetgrass, Hierochloe odorata, a perennial grass of northern Europe and North America, extracted as an absolute. The odour comes from coumarin, which is liberated when the grass is dried. The green undried plant is described as having little or no scent, so the note is a product of drying rather than of the living plant.
Usage in Perfumery
Attested on 34 Fragrantica entries and none on Parfumo. Fragrantica files it under greens, herbs and fougeres and calls it a sweet grassy coumarin scent. It is used where hay and tonka are used, in fougere and soft gourmand structures.
Similar Notes
Perfumes featuring Sweet Grass
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Sweet Grass appears prominently.
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