Awesome Osmanthus

Osmanthus is an unassuming little flower that punches above its weight. They look demure enough with their orange-yellow clusters dotted around the evergreen shrub they call home, but their lush fragrance is surprisingly expansive, gently billowing throughout forests in China, Japan and across Southeast Asia. The name for osmanthus comes from the Greek: “osma” meaning fragrance, and "anthos" meaning flower. And what a fragrance, what a flower! It’s a multi-dimensional delight, shimmering almost hallucinogenically between impressions of apricot, honey, suede and tea. Before it was ever used as a perfume material (first notably in Jean Patou’s 1000, a grand fruity-leather floral launched in 1972), osmanthus has been featured in Far Eastern cooking, jam, tea, wine and more for over 2500 years. (Currently, Pepsico manufactures osmanthus-flavored Pepsi for the Chinese domestic market.)

Osmanthus Absolute is a perfumer’s Swiss Army knife, lending its syrupy, velvety texture to a wide variety of expressions. Its succulent aspects of apricot, peach and raisin lend fruity floral richness to a composition, while its notes of tea, black pepper and green leaves enliven green bouquets. Most disarming of all is its sensual suede facet that turns innocent flowers into deeper, darker propositions. Natural osmanthus absolute is rare and very expensive, as it is laboriously harvested by hand, with 1,000 kilos of flowers producing only 1 kilo of absolute. As a consequence it's sometimes blended with, or duped by, synthetic accords of damascones, davana or violet. Whether natural or synthetic, it’s often used as a complexing agent in a perfume, dirtying gourmands or sweetening ouds. This sophisticated selection allows you to meld with the multifarious magnificence of osmanthus, from fuzzy honeyed intimacy to luminous leathers.