Vinyl Guaiacol

Note Profile

Molecule

About

Vinyl guaiacol is 4-vinylguaiacol, a phenol that smells of clove over smoke. One trade glossary places it exactly between Guaiacol and Eugenol: less medicinal than the first, less sweet than the second. It is not the published Vinyl note, which is plastic.

Scent Profile

Warm_spice leads and both sources reach it independently: Premiere Peau gives clove-like warmth, and the brewing literature gives clove-like phenolic character. It is held below the published Clove at 0.88 and Eugenol at 0.85, because the same glossary says this material is less sweet than eugenol and splits its weight with smoke. Smoky is the other half of the note, from the phenolic backbone and the burnt-spice image of charring cloves on a wood fire. It is deliberately well under the published Guaiacol at 0.88, because the one source that compares them says vinyl guaiacol is the less medicinal of the two. Sweet_vanillic is the vanilla half of the vanilla-clove accord. Amber_resinous is the sweet balsamic. Floral and powdery are the carnation, which is a use claim rather than a smell claim and so is held low. Leather is where any phenol of this kind lands in a formula.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~8h lasting

Family Spicy, Woody & Earthy

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

Origin

4-vinylguaiacol carries guaiacol's methoxyphenol ring with a vinyl group in the position that gives eugenol its clove. That is why it reads as a hybrid of the two. It is best known outside perfumery as the compound that makes a German wheat beer taste of clove. The American Homebrewers Association describes it as a clove-like phenolic compound in wheat beers, where yeast makes it by decarboxylating ferulic acid. Premiere Peau gives the fragrance reading: smoky-spicy with a clove-like warmth and a phenolic backbone, and a burnt-spice character like charring cloves on a wood fire. No manufacturer product page was found for it as a fragrance material under either name, so the perfumery description rests on that single glossary.

Usage in Perfumery

2 Fragrantica placements, none on Parfumo. Fragrantica files it with the synthetics and says it provides a vanilla-clove accord, sweet balsamic and smoky, and a spicy powdery carnation accord. That is how perfumers use it. It builds a carnation without carnation, and it gives a smoked or charred edge to a spice accord that eugenol alone will not deliver. It sits under leather and tobacco well, because the phenolic backbone is the same one those accords already carry.