Vanilla Blossom

Note Profile

Botanical 36 perfumes

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About

Vanilla Blossom is the living flower of the vanilla orchid. It is not the cured pod and it does not smell of vanilla. Vanillin is made during curing of the fruit, so the flower carries none of it, and the one published human-nose report of the flower calls it grassy, or sour and metallic.

Also Known As

Vanilla Flower

Scent Profile

Vanilla Blossom smells green, of freshly cut grass. The observers recorded a second reading of the same flower as sour and metallic, so a thin volatile acidity and a cold mineral edge sit under the green. Alpha-pinene at 62 per cent of the headspace gives a dry, terpenic, pine-resin backbone, and eucalyptol adds a cool, camphoraceous lift. It carries a dry, woody note, like bare timber, under the green and the cool lift.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeTop · ~2h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic

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

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ScentArt

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Origin

The flower of Vanilla planifolia, a climbing orchid grown in Madagascar, Mexico, Indonesia and Tahiti. Each bloom is greenish-yellow, about 5 cm across, and lasts one day. There is no commercial extract. What is known of the odour comes from headspace GC-MS of unpollinated flowers, which found 25 compounds led by alpha-pinene at 62.3 per cent and eucalyptol at 6.3 per cent.

Usage in Perfumery

There is no material to buy, so any use is a reconstruction. The note is worth having because it says what the flower is not: a perfumer reaching for vanilla blossom is reaching for a green, terpenic, faintly sour top, not for a second helping of the base.