Club circle
Bergamot, lemon, neroli, eau de Cologne: everything that smells of zest and freshness.
The Citrus & Fresh circle gathers lovers of citrus and fresh scents. Members talk about freshly squeezed zest, crushed orange leaves, eaux de Cologne and those summer perfumes that vanish too fast. Post a photo of a lemon from the market, a question about bergamot or a comparison between mandarin and orange. For your bearings, the page on the citrus fragrance family describes its sub-families and materials.
20 posts · 33 active members
pip.rhubarbin Citrus & Fresh · Wakefield ·
Question
First satsumas in the school fruit box today. Can anyone tell a satsuma from a clementine by smell alone? I can't.
thiago.berlin In Brazil we have many kinds of tangerina. For me the smell changes more with how ripe it is than with the name.
rafa_azaharin Citrus & Fresh · London ·
Scent diary
Hello friends, in Seville the bitter orange trees line the streets, and right now the fruit is still hard and green. Reading the club pages I learned that one tree gives perfume three materials: neroli, distilled from the blossom , plus the absolute that…
hana.neroli Neroli is my favourite of the three. The same still gives orange flower water: Wikipedia's page on steam distillation calls that watery part a…
rafa_azaharin Citrus & Fresh · London ·
Snapshot
Hello friends, night shift. I peeled a clementine in the porters' room at four in the morning and the whole corridor smelled of it, bright in the middle of all that grey. A clementine is my best friend at night. Un abrazo.
liam.saltwaterin Citrus & Fresh · Sydney ·
QuestionWater's warming up in Sydney. Is there anything citrus that smells like the beach, salt and all?
priya.cardamom I've moved this over from Wearing Fragrance, it's really a materials question. We talk notes here rather than bottles, so answers in materials…
ollie.grapefruitin Citrus & Fresh · Manchester ·
QuestionPeeling a grapefruit in the van this morning and under the bitter zest there's something like clean sweat. Not bad, just odd. What is that?
joon.yuzu Sulfur, basically. The club's page on grapefruit and its scent molecules names two: nootkatone, and grapefruit mercaptan, a sulfur compound with the…
joon.yuzuin Citrus & Fresh · Seattle ·
ReadingTL;DR: citrus is a family of its own in the French classification but only a subfamily on the Fragrance Wheel. - the club's Class on the seven fragrance families follows the French perfumers' seven, citrus first - Wikipedia's article on the Fragrance Wheel…
frankie.incense Fun fact: the wheel had ancestors. The same Fragrance Wheel article mentions Jellinek's Odor Effects Diagram, from 1949, among the earlier schemes [I…
ollie.grapefruitin Citrus & Fresh · Manchester ·
Snapshot
Half six, still dark, rain on the van roof. Half a grapefruit over the sink before the first job, and the bitter peel wakes me up better than coffee.
harriet.hayin Citrus & Fresh · Bristol ·
Scent diary
We've started studding oranges with cloves for the Christmas display at the garden centre, a bit early, I know. By mid-morning the potting shed smelled of sweet orange peel and warm spice, and my thumbs had gone brown. The page on sweet orange and the…
mags.lavender My nan did these every year and hung them in the wardrobe. Lovely smell, a lot of sore thumbs.
dario.bergamotin Citrus & Fresh · London ·
Memory
Back home near Reggio Calabria the bergamots are still green on the trees. My grandfather picked through the winter and his hands smelled of the peel for days, sweet and a little like flowers. The oil is squeezed out of the rind, by machine since the 1840s…
rafa_azahar Bergamot has bitter orange in its family, like the trees on my street. Keep the knife.
joon.yuzuin Citrus & Fresh · Seattle ·
Scent diary
TL;DR: green, black and oolong tea brewed side by side smell like three different materials. - green: cut grass, a bit of steamed spinach - black: dried fruit, honey, a little smoke - oolong: flowers, almost jasmine The club's tea page, on the molecules tea…
kasia.berlin I drink black tea with lemon, like at home in Poland. Now I will smell it before the lemon goes in.
joon.yuzuin Citrus & Fresh · Seattle ·
Exercise
TL;DR: I blind-tested myself on four citrus peels and got two right. Setup, if you want to copy it: - four peels: lemon, grapefruit, mandarin, sweet orange - each one folded over a paper strip, number on the back - my partner shuffled them, I smelled with my…
aoife_mint Did it with my housemates. Three out of four, I mixed up the lemon and a lime someone threw in to be smart.
hana.neroliin Citrus & Fresh · Vancouver ·
Discovery
Found a single yuzu at the Japanese grocery on my way home and carried it like an egg. The peel smells like grapefruit with mandarin on top, sharper and more floral than a lemon. My grandmother floated whole yuzu in her bath on the winter solstice, a custom…
joon.yuzu TL;DR: jealous. Yuzu is why my spreadsheet exists, and I've smelled the real fruit twice. That's my two cents.
orla.citrusin Citrus & Fresh · Belfast ·
QuestionDabbed a strip with lemon extract from the baking cupboard this morning and by lunch it was gone. Why does lemon leave so fast?
joon.yuzu Lemon is all top note. Wikipedia's article on perfume notes puts citrus among the small, volatile molecules you smell first and lose first.
aoife_mintin Citrus & Fresh · Cork ·
Tip
Small thing I picked up: the scent of a lemon sits in the coloured zest, the outer layer of the peel, where the oil is. The white pith underneath is just sponge. So when I practise I scratch the zest with a nail and leave the juice alone. The club's lemon…
dex_in_brooklyn this is why chef yells if you're digging into the pith with the microplane. bitter and zero smell
beatriz.londonin Citrus & Fresh · London ·
QuestionMy grandmother in Porto always said: no lemon on your skin before the beach. Is it the same with bergamot?
nell.wattle Okay, nerd moment: for the pressed oils, your grandmother was actually onto something. The club's bergamot page, on its phototoxicity explains that…
aoife_mintin Citrus & Fresh · Cork ·
QuestionQuestion from a beginner: is every citrus oil pressed out of the peel, or do some get distilled?
dex_in_brooklyn it's all pressed, you squeeze the peel and the oil sprays out. you're overthinking it