Winter Wonderscents: Five Perfume Ingredients to Create Wintery Fragrances

The choice of a particular fragrance is strongly linked to a season. With emotions so entwined with our sense of smell, we are naturally drawn to warm and comfy scents during the cold winter months.

So what type of scents should you be looking for to brave the cold months ahead? Here is a selection of five perfumery ingredients and accords that you can use to create a wintery atmosphere in a fragrance.

Leathery and smoky Notes

What feels more winter-like than the enveloping scents of smoky and earthy notes? The smell of a warm fire after a long walk in the forest.

Vetiver and patchouli essential oils will be the perfect woody notes because they are at the same time warm and earthy. Leathery notes, which smell of smoke, skin and burnt woods, can either be soft and creamy like suede (use Suederal for a soft leather effect) or dark and smoky, with styrax, cedarwood Atlas and birch and synthetic leathery ingredients such as the extreme IBQ.

Ambery notes and sweet woods

Balsamic ingredients such as ciste labdanum, powdery ingredients such as heliotropin, and ambery ingredients such as benzoin are typically found to create oriental fragrances. They give the feeling of warmth and comfort, while being very grown up.

Woods with sweet undertones such as Sandalwood, as well as its synthetic alternatives such as Bacdanol or Polysantol, will give a round, milky and soft leather undertones. Gaiac wood, a wood often confused with the its more famous cousin Palo Santo is also perfect to give a warm, sweet and balsamic note to a fragrance.

Vanilla and edible notes

Edible scents will bring you straight into Winter Wonderland. Caramel notes (created using maltol or ethyl maltol), sweet caky vanilla (created using vanillin or ethyl vanillin), chocolate (created using accord like Chocovan), almond (with Coumarin and Benzaldehyde) or milk notes (created with Diacethyl in trace) will create warm hot chocolate and chestnut notes.

Warm spices

Mulled wine and Christmas candle – warm spices are the smell of winter! Because of their culinary side as well as warming scents, spices feel very familiar and comforting.

Cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon and clove, alongside its synthetic alternatives eugenol and isoeugenol, are typically used to give a wintery effect.

More recent discovery with CO2 extracts is now allowing to obtain scent of sweet liquors such as Rum and Brandy will give brandy undertones to your fragrance.

Bergamot

For those overwhelmed by too many warm scents and prefer fresh and uplifting touches, bergamot will be the perfect solution.

Bergamot oil, present in our country’s favourite Earl Grey tea, is at the same time citrus fresh and woody, spicy and aromatic. Bergamot is one of the woodiest of the citrus notes and has in fact a scent reminiscent of lavender and black pepper.