CALLING ALL TESTERS

It’s getting to be spring, the birds are singing, the crocuses, hyacinths, and tulips are sticking their heads up, and there are several projects, perfume salons and other events on the horizon, each of which is going to be honored with a special edition perfume if things go as planned. In the works are a 100% natural white floral tropical perfume for Lyn Ayre’s Tropical Challenge Project at the end of this month, two different chocolate-themed ones for the San Francisco and Seattle chocolate + fragrance salons in March and May respectively, and an offbeat one for my Blackbird event in July.  In the meantime, I hope to finish a few others that I’ve been working on (or not working on!) for way too long.

Some of you have volunteered as testers in the past, so this is a call for about a dozen noses willing to sniff my latest experiments and provide written feedback. If you’re still reading this blog and are up for the task, please leave a comment to that effect. I already have addresses for those who participated in the testing exercise in the past, but I’m sure there’s going to be considerable turnover from year to year. Even if you’re on my list (or think you are), please confirm that you’re interested. For those who volunteer and provide feedback, there will be some sort of fragrant reward at the end of the process.

I’m looking forward to finishing up a whole list of projects before summer comes, including a start on upgrading my packaging and website. More about that project soon. 

Update on February 13: I still have room for 4-5 more testers, so there's still a chance to sign up. 

[The top flower is Adenium obesum - not an orchid, but one of the cool plants that I grow for fun. The lower one is Clerodendron trichrotomium, aka Harlequin Glory Bower, a tropical-looking tree that grows at the Ballard Locks in Seattle] 

OUD FEST II

Today we have a guest post by GAIL, who is my accomplice in oud sampling. Here's what she writes:

We are still working on sampling what we believe are real oud oils, so Oud Fest II was devoted to sampling four medium-priced (for real oud!), fine quality oils from Assam.

Ensar Oud: Assam Organic

The first sample, Ensar Oud's dark golden, honey-like "Assam Organic", was applied to the left wrists of the participants. It opened with a scent of bright, fermented wood and the smell of a clean milk-house (a combination of sweet hay, milk, caramel and manure). At five minutes the milk-house and fermented wood vanished leaving an impression of purple plastic and camphor that morphed into the scent of oat bran and brewing mash. About twenty minutes into the test "Assam Organic" suddenly took on the odor of an open third world drain or gutter with a relatively strong sillage.  This phase persisted for about twenty minutes, eventually thinning to a cloud of sulfurous smog.  After about an hour the odor of drainage and smog evolved into a sweet, grassy, semi-indolic perfume.  The dry down lasted through the night, changing to an understated floral accented with citrus peel and tea.

Sampling "Assam Organic" was like taking a day tour beginning at a dairy, continuing on to a brewery, then traveling through a large and dirty third world city, finally stopping for a cup of tea in a grove of flowers and citrus trees. 

[Note: Assam Organic is from plantation-cultivated trees. Unlike wild-harvested ouds, it is a renewable resource, albeit slowly renewable. One can only hope that, as wild Aquilaria populations are decimated, more producers will turn to ethical planting and harvesting of agarwood trees.]  

Agar Aura: Royal Assam

The next oud, Agar Aura's "Royal Assam", a dark golden oil with the consistency of honey, was applied to the right wrists. The initial impression of "Royal Assam" was that of a translucent green, slightly camphorous floral veil covering a sharp, bright woody scent.  At about two minutes the fragrance developed into a creamy spice and dusty plum that gradually changed to a combination of anise, champaca, sweet grass and tea. Twenty minutes into the test "Royal Assam" took a surprising turn toward dark chocolate, toffee, pink pepper, allspice and the scent of some sort of small berry (perhaps our Northwest native huckleberry?).  Despite the spice and fruit, the oil retained its airy, translucent character, even as it gradually dried down to a melange of vanilla, tea, champaca, the tiniest whiff of something like passion fruit, and dried maple leaves.

Agar Aura: Hindi Qademe

The third sample, Agar Aura's "Hindi Qademe", also the consistency and color of dark golden honey, was applied to the inside of the left arms below the elbows. It opened with a strong, pointed, bitter chocolate, a hint of camphor, fermented wood and barnyard.  After about a minute the camphor became more intense.  Around five minutes, notes of burnt sugar, warm tea and dusty dried leaves replaced the chocolate and barnyard.  This combination remained relatively linear with an occasional breakthrough of sweet hay.  As the fragrance dried down it became somewhat drier and cooler, but the sweet hay and tea remained, finishing with a hint of plastic and a suggestion of a woody, cedary scent reminiscent of  norlimbanol.

Oud Select: Indian Assam

The final oil tested was Oud Select's "Indian Assam", a thick and very dark oil applied to the inner right arms below the elbows. "Indian Assam" began as a pungent combination of green camphor, sun-dried tomatoes, fine olive oil, mushrooms and acidic tomato paste.  After about ten minutes the olive oil picked up a flavor of candied vanilla, tea and sweet wood.  An hour into the test, an aroma of thyme and other green culinary herbs made an appearance. The dry down of translucent sweet hay, tea and fine olive oil stayed close to the skin until the following morning.  While not a true gourmand scent, "Indian Assam" was definitely a foodie.

Conclusions:

Gail: When we decided to test only Assams we thought we might find a scent that would be common to all four oils.  Many articles on oud consider barnyard and animalic odors (perhaps an outcome of the traditional curing and distillation processes used in Assam) to be characteristic of Assam oils. The results of Oud Fest II suggest instead that the scents of tea, sweet grass, hay and camphor were common to the four oils tested.  Of these notes tea seemed to be the most obvious and persistent. The Indian state of Assam is famous for the flavor of its tea. Why not oud that smells like tea?

Having completed over two hours of intense testing the participants adjourned Oud Fest II to their favorite pizzeria where they enjoyed items from the happy hour menu.

Ellen: Like Gail, I was looking for some common features that would link all of the Assam ouds, or all Aquilaria agallocha oils, together. However, there’s such a variety of oils from every region and every species, that it’s hard to make any sort of generalization. Traditionally, Assam oud is noted for its “barnyard” smell, but one of the four we tested had no “barnyard” odor whatsoever. I didn’t get the strong impression of tea that Gail did, although there was a hint of tea in some of the oils. If I had to put my finger on one or two characteristics, I think it would be a sweetish, slightly matte, caramel-like character that all of the Assam oils had when contrasted with the sharper, more sparkling Indonesian and Borneo ouds that we tested before.

One thing that particularly struck me when we went outside into the cold air, was a sharp, woody smell that stuck in my nose and was activated by the cold. It was almost like smelling a cedar or juniper wood fire on a cold winter night. I’m sure it wasn’t from an actual fire because I smelled it outside Gail’s house, again in the parking lot of the pizzeria both arriving and leaving, and in an attenuated form all night. I don’t know which oud was the main contributor to this beautiful fragrance, or whether all combined to produce it. In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. 

[Top photo from Wikimedia. Other photos from the websites of the respective companies]

ENCHANTED FOREST WINNER

The winner of the carded sample of Enchanted Forest by The Vagabond Prince has been chosen by the usual method of random drawing.

The Winner is MAGGIE MAHBOUBIAN.

Congratulations! Please e-mail me your full mailing address, and I'll ship it off to you. You can find my e-mail address in the contact info under my profile.

FIFIS AND THE MEANING OF AWARDS

Ever since one of the By Kilian fragrances won the Fragrance Foundation’s “Indie” FiFi Award, there’s been considerable discussion of whether that choice was appropriate or not. There has been a lengthy discussion on Basenotes, in which everyone championed his or her own favorite indie fragrance, and blogs like The Alembicated Genie have jumped into the fray as well.

Ignoring, for the time being, the completely subjective and unanswerable questions of which fragrance should have won the top “indie” award and how to define “indie” in the first place, the most important piece of information coming out of all this is the fact that the “nominating” process is not a nomination at all, but a relatively expensive (for a true starving indie artist) self-submission. I’m happy to see that this little-publicized process is being hauled out of the closet and exposed to the scrutiny of perfume consumers everywhere. Now you know what “Nominated for a FiFi Award” really means. It means the “nomination” was bought and paid for by the company that made the perfume. Nothing more, nothing less.

When I heard that there was a new, “indie” FiFi category, I was initially interested, but that interest quickly turned to consternation when I learned that the “nomination” process would have simply involved submitting one or more of my own fragrances and paying somewhere between $200-400 for the privilege of calling those fragrances “nominated for a FiFi award”. I was under no illusions that submission would result in anything more than the “nomination” and whatever mystical cachet that might have among those who don’t know how the process works.

Semantically, there is a clear difference between a “nomination”, which comes from a third party, and a “submission”, which one does oneself. To call a paid submission a “nomination” is misleading, to say the least. In my admittedly overly-scholarly world-view, nominating oneself for an “honor” and paying to do so is a worthless exercise in tacky self-promotion. 

Maybe it’s time for all of us artisan perfumers to band together and establish our own renegade organization with its own lobbying efforts and its own awards. Let those involved in big industry give each other gratuitous pats on the back at a glitzy party, and let the same old players owned by a few huge corporations show up for that exercise every year. Let them pay their money so that they can brag about their self-nominations.

Blogger awards and best-of lists are one form of genuine, mostly unsolicited recognition that already exists for indie and artisan perfumers. I’m sure everyone finds it gratifying to be mentioned by a blog or other publication, especially when that mention was freely given. However, in my dream world, it might be interesting to develop some sort of an artisan anti-FiFi award. It could be done through a process in which the perfume-consuming public is free to recommend that their favorite artisan perfumes be nominated (a “FanFair” award?). Alternatively, it could be done as the Oscar nominations are done, through an “academy” of committees with real expertise in specific areas (an “Artisan Fragrance Academy Award”?).   Once nominated by an unaffiliated third party or parties, qualified artisan perfumers would then be notified and could choose to submit their work for an award, or not. That way, “nomination” would be a genuine honor of sorts, not a purchased commodity.

Surely there are people out there who would enjoy volunteering their noses and their expertise to serve on evaluation and selection committees for various fragrance categories in return for the joy of sampling good perfumes and getting to keep the samples. Obviously, evaluating films or perfumes is not as clear-cut as a running race, where someone unequivocally crosses the finish line first, but if we in the artisan perfume community do want to provide recognition of excellence, the process should be as fair and unbiased as possible. 

On the more serious side, there must also be people out there who would be willing to do some pro bono organizing of efforts to counter regulations and legislation designed to limit artistic expression and intentionally or unintentionally drive small artisan entrepreneurs of all types out of business. If all of the little artisan groups could work with one another and unite under one umbrella, I have no doubt that positive things could result. Maybe that’s too much to ask, but a series of awards that really meant something might be the carrot on the stick that could get such a movement going. 

[Football trophy photo from Wikimedia; money-changer painting adapted from one by Marinus van Reymerswale, 1541; trophy award ceremony photo from my own ancient archives]

BIG LEAF MAPLE SYRUP

Last summer I read that it’s possible to make maple syrup from our local maple species, the big leaf maple, Acer macrophyllum. It’s aptly named, given that the leaves are the largest of any maple species, almost twice as large as my outstretched hand. These trees grow all over the Pacific Northwest, where they are the predominant deciduous species in the lowlands and foothills. They’re often covered with thick green moss. In rainforest areas, they're completely draped with moss, like green veils. 

We have some big leaf maple trees growing on our property, and so does Gail. This spring we both decided to do an experiment and tap the trees to see if we could make syrup. Gail’s more organized than I am, so she’s been collecting sap from her trees since mid-January, which is the right season to do it around here. Due to the lack of the proper size drill bit, we’ve been procrastinating, but yesterday we were finally ready to tap the trees and install the spiles. A spile is a conical metal tube with a small hole on the end that goes in the tree trunk, with a spout to deliver the juice into the bucket, and a hook on which to hang the bucket.

The instructions said to drill a hole 2-2.5 inches deep about 3 feet up the trunk, aiming for the xylem layer, that conducts sap upward from the roots. The spile is then tapped into the tree with a hammer, the bucket is hung, and you wait.

Gail has collected over 20 gallons of sap from her trees, and has started boiling it down, but apparently those trees are slowing down or stopping sap production now. The taps we put in yesterday haven’t produced a single drop so far. The taps are installed in big, husky trees that look like they should be perfectly capable of making gallons of sap. The wood shavings were white and healthy looking, and the spiles can only go in so far, so I don’t think we missed the xylem pipeline. I’m thinking that February is already too late in the season. After all, many of the trees here are in active bud, the crocuses and hyacinths are coming up, and the birds are singing their little heads off. Next year we’ll put the taps in on or around January 1 so that we have a month of collecting. February may be the season for New England maples, but not for ours. Live and learn.