Tonquitone™

Note Profile

Molecule

About

Tonquitone is IFF's deer-musk base: animalic and urinous over a clean macrocyclic musk, with ambergris, dry wood and a sweet balsamic tail. It is a fixative first and a smell second, and it anchors leather, chypre and oriental accords.

Scent Profile

Animalic is the whole point of the material and both trade sources lead with it: 'a very realistic and animalic Musk Deer smelling blend', 'realistic deer-musk facet... and slight urinous nuances', with horse-hair and civet named as supporting facets. Clean_musk is the other half of what a macrocyclic musk base does. The maker's comparison point is Muscenone, a clean macrocyclic musk, and a base that reads only animalic would not be sold as a skin-warmth material per cent. Amber_resinous is ambergris, which both source descriptions name in the first sentence of the odour profile, together with 'sweet balsam'. Dry_woody is quoted directly, 'dry-woody', and appears in both the odour profile and the descriptor list. Sweet_vanillic is 'sweet caramel/vanilla', which is what keeps this base warm rather than merely feral. Below: leather because leather is the first accord family the maker lists for it and castoreum replacers the first pairing, powdery as the diffusive musk quality shared with muscenone and the deer-musk notes, honeyed and earthy as traces. Nothing green, citrus or floral is claimed by any source and none is asserted.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~48h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather

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

Origin

A proprietary compounded base from International Flavors & Fragrances, not a single molecule. Both retailers that sell it list its CAS as 'Mixture'. It was built to reproduce natural deer musk using only macrocyclic and biodegradable materials, and is free of polycyclic and nitro musks. The version in trade is RMS 1018, renamed after the October 2018 raw material shortage, and is also PCMF and DEPR, meaning polycyclic-musk-free with diethyl phthalate removed. The name echoes Tonquin musk, the historical deer musk of Tonkin, and not tonka bean.

Usage in Perfumery

A base fixative with high substantivity. Scentspiracy gives 0.01 to 0.5 per cent for skin warmth and 1 to 2 per cent for feral, civet-toned accords, and reports it 'rounds harsh lactones, extends woody musks, anchors volatile spices'. It pairs with castoreum replacers, costus, indole, civetone and ambrettolide.