Terpineol

Note Profile

Molecule

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

Floral leads, and it is the one claim two independent reference sources make in the same word: Wikipedia's chembox says 'pleasant, lilac-like' and PubChem, citing Kirk-Othmer, says 'floral, lilac'. Dry_woody is the other half of the material and it is not a minor facet. ScenTree files terpineol under 'Woody > Coniferous > Terpenic' and calls its odour 'refreshing pine-like'. Cooling_mentholic is the 'Camphoric' end of that same ScenTree path, the sharp cold edge that pine oil carries. Green and aromatic_herbal are held low and are inferred from the coniferous placement rather than quoted, so they carry wide spreads. Nothing here resolves the split between the fine-fragrance identity and the industrial one, because no fetched source ranks one above the other.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeTop · ~2h lasting

Family Floral, Woody & Earthy

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

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.