Terpineol

Note Profile

Molecule 1 perfume

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About

A soft lilac-floral with a pine-like, camphoraceous woody side. The two halves are both attested and neither source set treats the other as an error. Reference works reach for lilac. An ingredient-house catalogue reaches for coniferous and camphoric. Expect a clean, slightly sharp floral that sits closer to household freshness than to a fine-fragrance flower.

Scent Profile

Terpineol smells like a soft lilac floral, clean and slightly sharp rather than heady. A pine-like, dry woody side runs alongside it, closer to household freshness than to a fine perfume flower. A cool, camphoraceous edge cuts through both, sharp and slightly medicinal. It sits between a garden flower and a coniferous wood, with neither side dominating.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeTop · ~2h lasting

Family Floral, Woody & Earthy

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can build Terpineol around this material.

Alpha-terpineol lilac · floral · citrus

Smell words come from published sources.

Allergens perfumes with this note can list: Terpineol

A given perfume with this note may use this material, or something else, and may or may not contain the allergens above.

Origin

An alcohol found in pine oil, petitgrain, cajuput and many other essential oils, and made at scale from alpha-pinene by way of turpentine. Commercial terpineol is a mixture of four isomers: alpha, beta and gamma-terpineol plus terpinen-4-ol. The lilac descriptors published by Wikipedia and by PubChem (citing the Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology) are for the alpha isomer. ScenTree's page describes the technical mixture.

Usage in Perfumery

Bulk use is in detergent and home-care fragrance, where the pine-fresh side does the work. In fine fragrance it is a cheap and stable lilac and lily filler, and a building block in reconstitutions of pine, lilac and neroli. ScenTree also lists it as a base ingredient for olfactory reconstitutions rather than as a note in its own right.