Osmanthe Tardive
Osmanthus, green tea, beeswax
- Composed by
- Ariane Cazal
- Family
- Floral
- Formula written
- 2020
- From
- €88.00
Osmanthe Tardive
Osmanthus, green tea, beeswax
How it was built
Osmanthus flowers for about two weeks in October and smells, improbably, of apricot skin and leather at the same time. The absolute is one of the few naturals that arrives already looking like a finished accord.
The composition does very little to it. Green tea absolute and yuzu at the top hold the apricot back from candied; jasmine sambac deepens the floral without arguing with it; beeswax absolute at the base picks up the honeyed side of the flower and gives it somewhere to land.
Tardive -- late -- refers to the harvest, which we take from the end of the flowering rather than the start. The later flowers are less green and more fruited.
How it wears
Four properties, read on skin over a full day rather than on a blotter. They describe behaviour, not preference.
Sillage
An arm's length
Longevity
Most of a day
Temperature
Neither
Density
Layered
These are the atelier’s own readings, taken on skin rather than on a blotter, and they describe how the fragrance behaves rather than how much anyone liked it.
Head, heart and base
The materials that determine each stage, in the order they own it. The bars are compositional weight within a tier, not a percentage of the formula; the formula itself is not published.
Head
The most volatile materials. They are what you smell as the alcohol flashes off, and they are gone inside twenty minutes.
Green tea absoluteCamellia sinensis
YuzuCitrus junos
Pink pepperSchinus molle
Heart
The body of the composition. It emerges as the head clears and holds for two to four hours; this is the fragrance as it is meant to be recognised.
Osmanthus absoluteOsmanthus fragrans
Jasmine sambac absoluteJasminum sambac
Gamma-decalactone
Base
The least volatile materials, and the ones that fix the rest in place. What is left on skin at the end of the day, and on cloth for days after.
Ambrette seedAbelmoschus moschatus
SandalwoodSantalum album
Beeswax absolute
Materials and provenance
Where the principal materials come from and how they are won from the plant. Every lot behind a given bottle is recorded against its flacon code.
Osmanthus absoluteOsmanthus fragrans
Guilin, Guangxi
Hexane extraction of late-October flowers, then absolute
The flowers are shaken onto sheets rather than picked. A tree gives perhaps two kilograms of usable flower a season, and it takes several hundred kilograms to make one of absolute.
Jasmine sambac absoluteJasminum sambac
Madurai, Tamil Nadu
Night-picked flowers, hexane extraction within four hours
Sambac releases its scent after dark. Picking begins at dusk and the flowers go into solvent the same night, before they open fully and the indole climbs.
Size and price
Each size is filled from the same batch. The ten millilitre format is not a sample; it is the same juice in a smaller flacon.
€88.00
10 ml eau de parfum · reference NOC-OST-010
Bottles are filled to order from the current batch and dispatched within five working days. Fragrance cannot be returned once the seal is broken; an unopened flacon may be returned within fourteen days.