These Perfumes Used A Crucial Wine Making Process to Come to Life

Here’s how your favourite perfume or scent is typically made: perfumers decide what they would like the final product to smell like, and begin to source the plants and parts needed to bring their vision to life. Through whatever extraction method they consider best — maceration, enfleurage, steam distillation, boiling, solvent extraction or expression — highly concentrated essential oils with the fragrance oils are gotten, blended and added to alcohol for maturation before they are left to age, then tested and packaged.

Amouage barrel-aged perfumes
Perfumes are typically aged in flasks. Amouage chose to age their latest perfume collection, Essences, in barrels, just like wines and whiskeys. Image courtesy of Amouage

Ageing scents takes anywhere from 6 to 12 months, during which time they are left undisturbed in a cool, dark area to form permanent ties to the alcohol. It is here that perfumeries, like Amouage, choose to get creative. Instead of using traditional storage methods like flasks, the Omani brand turned to the winemaking process for inspiration and opted to age the scents in wooden barrels.

Sounds brilliant, right? However, the result wasn’t as they had expected.

Amouage reasons perfume
The first in the collection, Reasons, is a heady, woody, spicy scent, perhaps powerfully enhanced by the barrel ageing process. Image courtesy of Amouage

“Everyone was expecting that [the ageing process] to work beautifully,” said the Amouage’s chief creative officer Renaud Salmon. But then the barrels started leaking. “Fragrances contain oil, and the viscosity of oil is much higher than alcohol. So the oil was going through the barrels, and everyone panicked.”

Instead of backing down, the Amougae team decided to change course. The oils were taken out of the barrels and replaced with ethanol to be used in blending the fragrances, while the actual perfume oil itself was stored in metal tanks and infused with Australian sandalwood chips. “Sometimes what you could consider as a disaster can lead to a new configuration that can be even more exciting,” Salmon elucidated.

The Amouage Essence Lustre was developed by Julien Rasquinet and Paul Guerlain
Each scent was developed by world-renowned master perfumers. Julien Rasquinet and Paul Guerlain created Lustre. Image courtesy of Amouage

This unusual strategy worked. Unaged versions were compared to the finished products, and the team was pleased to find that the method enhanced the original scents. The result? The Amouage Essences, three distinct fragrances that embody all the unique qualities of well-aged wines.

First in the Amouage Essences collection is Reasons with scents of hazelnut, davana, and palo santo for a woody, spicy fragrance that packs a punch.

Last in the Amouage Essences collection is Outlands
Outlands is perhaps the most masculine of all three, and its powerful woody and ambery notes are not for the fainthearted. Image courtesy of Amouage

Next up is Lustre developed by Julien Rasquinet and Paul Guerlain. Featuring notes of cardamom, orris, sandalwood, and vanilla, Lustre is a lighter but no less powerful fragrance.

Completing the trio in this series is Outlands, and, just like its name suggests, this woody, ambery fragrance with an unexpected blend of citrus, patchouli, balsam, and resin, designed by indie perfumer Cécile Zarokian is the most masculine scent of the three.

The Amouage Essences collection
The Amouage Essences collection costs $475 apiece. Image courtesy of Amouage

If you’re looking for a perfect gift this season, perhaps the new Amouage Essences, inspired by the passing of time, developed by seasoned perfumers, and, aged through the same wine and whiskey ageing process might just be what you need.

Source: Robb Report