Woody & Earthy

What holds it together

The structural family: what a fragrance is built on rather than what it announces itself as. Modern perfumery leans on these harder than on any other group, because the synthetic woody ambers are cheap, powerful and extraordinarily long-lasting. phenolic joined on 2026-08-31 and was placed here by measurement, not by argument. It was first put in elemental on the reasoning that a compound class is a character of matter like a bond or a rock. Measured across all 1,746 published notes that reasoning failed the same way the identical argument for waxy_fatty had failed hours earlier: phenolic correlates with sulphurous at +0.010 and mineral at +0.016, and dragged elemental's coherence from +0.125 to +0.050. Its real partner is smoky at +0.241, more than double any other facet in the vocabulary, with leather second at +0.181. Tar, creosote, cade and peat are structural base materials, which is what this family is for.

Notes strongest in Woody & Earthy

Strongest first. A note's family value is the highest of its member facets, not their average - averaging would let a note that is emphatically one thing and nothing else read as weak, which is the opposite of what the family is for.

• Lapsang Souchong Tea Leather Heart · ~8h Prepared 5
• Patchouli Vanilla Amber Base · ~24h Botanical 9,468
• Paper Powdery Vanilla Heart · ~8h Prepared 17
• Jatamansi or Spikenard Animalic Base · ~24h Botanical 5
• Himalayan Cedar Base · ~16h Botanical 2
• Muhuhu Base · ~16h Botanical
• Teak Leather Base · ~12h Botanical 95
• Mysore Sandalwood Vanilla Base · ~36h Botanical 49
• Geosmin Heart · ~8h Molecule 9
• Charred Wood Leather Base · ~30h Prepared
• Vetiver Base · ~36h Botanical 5,356
• Oak Lactonic Vanilla Boozy Base · ~48h Botanical 285
• Ebony Amber Base · ~48h Botanical 109
• Earthy Mineral Base · ~24h Abstract 94
• Hinoki Wood Citrus Heart · ~8h Botanical 71
• Beetroot Mineral Heart · ~8h Botanical 8
• Wolfwood Amber Leather Base · ~48h Molecule 5
• Lovage Aromatic Heart · ~4.5h Botanical 1
• BBQ Vanilla Animalic Base · ~12h Animal
• Cepes Green Base · ~12h Botanical

The facets in it

The facets are the coordinate system; the family is how it is read. Every one of these is measured separately, and a note carries a value on all of them at once.

The other families

Every other family gathers the same 34 facets a different way.

Keep going

• The 34 facets What each one covers, where it stops, and the substances that carry it
• The 10 families How the 34 are gathered, and why a family value is a max and not a mean
• How it is built The five layers, from CAS numbers up to the families a shopper browses