Wenge Wood

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Wenge wood is the timber of Millettia laurentii, a large legume tree of central Africa. Two independent sources describe the smell and they agree. The Wood Database records "a faint, slightly bitter scent when being worked". A perfumery glossary calls it "slightly bitter or earthy, somewhat similar to dark cocoa" when freshly cut. Both say the smell is weak and fades once the wood is finished. So the vector is a dry wood with a bitter cocoa edge and an earthy floor, scored low across the board because nobody describes it as strong.

Scent Profile

Dry_woody leads because the referent is timber and both sources describe a wood smell first. It is held near the middle of the wood band, not at the top, because both sources call the smell faint and say it fades once the wood is finished. Coffee_cacao is the one feature that separates wenge from every other plain timber in this vocabulary: the glossary source reads the smell as "somewhat similar to dark cocoa". It is unsweetened cocoa, so nothing sweet is scored with it. Earthy is named directly by the same source and is consistent with the bitterness both sources report. Nothing else is scored. Neither source names smoke, leather, vanilla, resin or milk, and the spreads stay wide across those directions rather than claiming they are absent. Amburana wood carries sweet_vanillic and chestnut wood carries lactonic; wenge has neither, because no source gives it any sweetness or creaminess at all.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~9h lasting

Family Woody & Earthy

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

Origin

The heartwood of Millettia laurentii, felled in Cameroon, Gabon, the Congo basin and Tanzania. It is a very dense, very dark timber used for flooring, furniture and instrument parts. No essential oil, absolute or extract of wenge was found from any supplier or fragrance house. There is no wenge distillate on sale, so the two odour sources here describe sawn and sanded timber, not a perfumery raw material.

Usage in Perfumery

Attested twice on Parfumo across two brands and absent from Fragrantica. That is thin but it clears the two-brand bar. With no commercial extract behind the term, treat it as a wood name a perfumer prints for its dark, masculine associations, built in the base from other woody materials. Neither source addresses how it behaves in a formula.