Wine Lees

Note Profile

Prepared 2 perfumes

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About

Wine lees is the sediment left in the barrel after the wine is drawn off. What separates it is the layer the sediment adds: yeast with a warm bread-like softness, an earthy and fungal damp, a mineral undertone, and the dry oak of the stave the lees sat against.

Scent Profile

Wine Lees smells boozy, like fermented alcohol and wine sediment. A ripe grape fruitiness runs through it, from raisin and dried fruit to crisp green grape. A sharp sourness shows, like lees-aged wine. A warm, bread-like nuttiness comes from the yeast, over a damp, earthy layer. A dry oak wood and a faint mineral undertone close it.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeBase · ~10h lasting

Family Sweet & Gourmand, Fruity

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

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can make Wine Lees from this natural extract.

Natural extract Wine lees oil, white fusel · grape · fermented

Smell words come from published sources.

A given perfume with this note may use this material, or something else.

Origin

Lees, or dregs, are the dead yeast cells, grape solids and tartrates that settle out of wine after fermentation. No fragrance house or supplier document naming a wine-lees material was found, and none of the three trade sources says what the perfumery note is made from, whether an absolute, a hydrodistillate or a built accord. So the chemistry behind the yeast, fungal and mineral claims cannot be checked against any spec sheet or GC-MS. All three sources are perfume-house or perfumery blogs.

Usage in Perfumery

11 Fragrantica placements and 4 Parfumo placements across 4 brands. Bon Parfumeur, which sells a fragrance using it, treats it as a rich and complex accord, and Carrement Belle pairs it with green and white facets that it says reveal warm fruit. In the published set it is the wine note with a cellar-floor rather than a glass-of-wine reading.