maeve.mossin Seasons & Celebrations · Galway ·
Memory
Here's a thing. The shops in Galway have the barmbracks stacked up already and the smell of mixed spice and tea-soaked fruit caught me in the queue and I was back at my gran's table waiting to see who'd get the ring. We carved turnips for Halloween lanterns…
cormac.bog Turnip lanterns, yes. My da's always smelled scorched by the end of the night.
first.sniffin Welcome to the Club · Exeter ·
IntroductionStarting from zero. I can talk about a painting for ten minutes, but not about a smell. My gran's house smelled of roses and strong tea, and I'd love to be able to describe that properly one day.
harriet.hay Hello and welcome, first.sniff. Zero is where every one of us started, so you're in good company. Roses and strong tea make a lovely pair to begin…
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…
priya.cardamomin Welcome to the Club · Toronto ·
ChallengeThread of the week: introduce yourself with three smells. No perfume names, just the smells. 1) one from your street 2) one from your kitchen 3) one from your coat pocket Mine: wet maple leaves on the sidewalk, cardamom pods splitting in a hot pan, and a…
harriet.hay Bonfire smoke from the allotments, toast, and a conker, which smells of nothing at all and lives in my pocket anyway. Shout if you get stuck.
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…
Class no. 7 · 7 min read
The Osmothèque, a perfume archive in Versailles, holds 4,000 fragrances, 800 of them no longer sold, and remakes lost ones from their original formulas. Here is what it keeps, why perfumes vanish and how you can still smell them.
bev.bostonin History, Bottles & Houses · Boston ·
Memory
My late husband wore the same aftershave for forty years, a green bottle with lavender on top and something sweet like hay underneath. I'm trying to work out what that sweet part was.
dougie_newcastle Lavender and hay sounds like a fougère to me. Half the shipyard smelled like that on a Saturday night.
aroha.rainin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Wellington ·
QuestionKia ora, benzoin keeps popping up in the amber threads and I've got no idea what its like. Sweet? Smoky? Piney? Nothing like it in the bush round here as far as I know.
kit.clove Warm vanilla with a bit of dust, to me. Like the paste pot in the bindery on a cold morning.
pip.rhubarbin Welcome to the Club · Wakefield ·
Introduction
I help out in a primary classroom in Wakefield, and the rhubarb triangle starts at the end of our road. Forced rhubarb grows in dark sheds and gets picked by candlelight, and the smell in there is sharp, pink and earthy all at once. My friends think I'm…
nell.wattle Rhubarb actually has its own page in the notes, rhubarb as a fresh, sour note , so you're in good company.
ambrose_leatherin Seasons & Celebrations · Northampton ·
Scent diary
Right then. The posters are up for the fireworks on the rec, and I've started smelling Bonfire Night before it's here: damp leaves, somebody's garden fire, the first wood burners going along the terraces. On the night it'll be woodsmoke, spent sparklers and…
callum.peat Bonfire Night is the one night a year nobody at home moans about the smoke on my coat.
teddy.tonkain Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Austin ·
DiscoverySmelled a tonka bean straight after cupping this morning and it has the same toasted almond thing as a fresh roast!! Mind blown. Back to lurking.
kemi.cocoa Toasted almond is how I'd describe tonka too. Put it next to a vanilla pod and the almond gets even louder.
rafa_azaharin Seasons & Celebrations · London ·
Memory
Hello friends, in my mother's house the Christmas starts weeks early, when she toasts the flour for the polvorones in a big pan. The flour goes from no smell to biscuit to almost hazelnut, and then the almonds and the cinnamon go in. In London I tried in my…
dario.bergamot In Reggio my nonna made mostaccioli with honey. Different biscuit, same kitchen too warm to stand in.
Class no. 6 · 7 min read
Grasse is the town in the south of France where growing perfume plants, processing them and composing fragrance have developed together since at least the sixteenth century, skills UNESCO inscribed on its intangible heritage list in 2018. You'll learn where its May rose, jasmine, tuberose and mimosa came from, what its perfume museum holds, and how to smell the town's palette at home.
nell.wattlein Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Melbourne ·
Discovery
Okay, nerd moment: the scruffy grey shrub by the school veggie patch, the one every kid calls the curry bush, is immortelle, Helichrysum italicum. A Year 9 crushed a leaf this arvo and asked why it smelled like a takeaway, so we looked it up. The club's page…
mo_from_leicester I sell curry powder all day and I'd never have guessed a plant could smell of it on its own.
nnamdi.vetiverin Woods, Mosses & Roots · Nottingham ·
TipWhen vetiver, cedar and sandalwood start smelling the same, I go and stand in the yard for a minute. Comes back every time.
aroha.rain It's olfactory fatigue: the Wikipedia page on olfactory fatigue says sensitivity comes back once you leave the area. Works heaps for me.
fern.mossin Learning to Smell · Swansea ·
Discovery
Read about steam distillation on a wet lunch break: steam carries the scent out of the leaves, and once it condenses the oil separates from the water. The watery part is called the hydrosol, a word I'd never seen before.
nell.wattle The same page says eucalyptus oil is actually made this way on an industrial scale. Every rainy walk here makes more sense now.
ash.and.emberin Learning to Smell · Calgary ·
Exercise
Tried the spearmint and caraway pair from the club's Class on training your nose . Same atoms, mirror images, and one smells like gum and the other like rye bread. My brain still hasn't caught up.
aoife_mint Spearmint is my favourite thing to smell and I never knew it had a twin. Doing this tonight. There's a page on mint in the Notes too.