Introducing Juke

 Juke
Hot, humid nights, moonlight on water, night bugs singing, hot jazz in the distance. The air is heady with magnolia flowers releasing their scent into the darkness. Tucked into the bayou is a juke joint, music spilling out. A woman is dancing with a drink in her hand, dangling off of a perfumed wrist. A whiff of imported French perfume conjured with goods collected along the spice route mixes with moonshine and tobacco in the sweaty, humid speakeasy.

 Sweet honey bayou with earthy orris root, tobacco and syrupy balsams compose the bottom chord. Heady floral notes of pink champaca and orange flower concrete mingling with honey absolute create the heart with lime, clementine and white champa leaf (a newly discovered and new favorite oil).
                     Etsy

Top notes: lime, clementine, white champa leaf
Heart notes: pink champaca absolute, orange flower concrete, honey absolute
Base notes: tobacco absolute, orris root, peru balsam, majmua udd attar










Orange Flower Water

Orange Flower Water in a vintage bottle.
Orange Flower comes from the blossoms of the bitter orange tree, Citrus sinensis.  The bitter orange plant actually gives us four fragrant oils.  The steam distillation of the blossoms is the coveted neroli.  When an absolute is made of the same flowers it is referred to as orange blossom absolute.  The pressed rinds delivers bitter orange essential oil and the unripe green fruit, stems and twigs give us petitgrain oil.

Bitter orange is a peculiar kind of citrus.  It is fresh yet dry and elegant with a lasting sweet undertone.  It's blossoms have a light, dry nature. They produce one of my absolute favorite scents in all of creation, the coveted orange blossom.  I should really live near orange groves.

Orange flower water is the water left over after the blossoms have been distilled to make essential oil. The blossoms are put into a vessel and steam is forced through it. The steam collects in another vessel with the essential oil floating on top. The oil is syphoned off, the water remaining is the hydrosol.

The scent is sublime.  It is floral, fruity with a hint of green, refreshing and very complex. When inhaled orange blossom is antidepressant and a mild sedative, so useful at night to ease insomnia.  It has a joyous, uplifting quality. It stops caffeine jitters and is a great choice for fretful babies. It is known for its supportive qualities during the detoxification process or when quitting an addictive habit.

Neroli is a wonderful treatment for delicate, sensitive and oily skin (due to its astringency).  Use it as a toner and in face masks with clay and honey.  It can also be used as a perfume!

Both rosewater and orange flower water have been used in cooking and baking for centuries.  Indian and Middle Eastern desserts are often delicately flavored with them.  It is what's used to flavor madeleines and prompted Marcel Proust to remember the past.  It's also often used to flavor marshmallows.  Add it to champagne as an aphrodisiac, or if you're not inclined to drink alcohol add it to plain seltzer. One tablespoon in a liter of seltzer would befit a toast at any occasion.  It's one of my favorite summer refreshers.

I've bottled some up in vintage bottles I found on the beach, all one of a kind. You can see them, and other hydrosols, in my Etsy store.


Tools of the Trade: Ground Glass Stoppered Bottles


I truly adore ground glass stoppered bottles.  The good ones have a tight secure fit and don't let air escape.  I collect antique ones for their visual beauty but actually use them quite a bit.  Stronger scented potions tend to ruin good phenolic caps forcing me to toss them into the rubbish (where they end up in landfill).  Here are some gorgeous examples.






 






Resins and Balsams



My recent class on the Spice Route has me surrounded by various resins and balsams.  They're a principal ingredient in Oriental perfumes and have been used as a fixative since the dawn of the spice route.  I've looked up the definitions of both, as well as gum and oleoresin, and they all appear to be the same.  

According to Elena Vosnaki :
"The distinction between resin and balsam is one of form, on a fundamental level: Simply put and generalizing, resinous materials come in the form of solidified, gum-like "tears" seeping from the elixir vitae circulating into the bark of big trees, such as the Boswellia Carteri (which produces frankincense). Balsams on the other hand are tricky materials, not necessarily tree secretions, often coming as they do from flower pods or bushy twigs (such as vanilla orchids or the Mediterranean rockrose). But there are exceptions to every rule: Opopanax, though resinous smelling itself, actually comes from a herb, opopanax chironium.
So the real focus when referencing balsamic and resinous terminology is how the materials actually smell and how they're different or common in scent, rather than what their origin is.  Therefore, for ease, resinous & balsamic materials are classified into 3 distinct olfactory profiles according to their aromatic properties first and foremost." 
Styrax from the Liquidambar orientalis tree,
smells a little like cinnamon and glue.

 In my mind balsams such as benzoin, peru balsam, tolu balsam and labdanum are sweeter and softer. They're gentler and enveloping and add a fixative quality to florals.  Resins like frankincense, myrrh, oppoponax and styrax are widely used in incense and have a more defined characteristic.  They're usually antiseptic so have a medicinal quality to them.

 These materials are the basis for Oriental and Amber perfumes, some of the first perfumes, created since antiquity.  In ancient Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Mesopotamia and classical Rome resins and balsams were combined with sweet and pungent spices and exotic flowers to create perfume for the gods.

 I'll be hosting and Oriental/Amber perfume workshop in July in my home studio.  Email me for more information or to register.
Amber resin

Topiary and Creating a Green Fragrance

Topiary.  What a crazy idea if you think about it.  I was never a fan but during the course of the last year I've realized that it goes way beyond elephants and giraffes on the front lawn.  It's the crazy geometric shapes that confound and delight me.  I just love that people go about trimming their shrubbery into these exotic shapes.  Such folly!

I thought it might be a good idea to create a green perfume as an ode to topiary.  After some research I've discovered that some of the shrubs used to fashion topiary are easily available in essential oils. Unfortunately boxwood is not available (but the most used plant).  However laurel, myrtle and thuja are easily obtained.

The fun part is always ordering new oils to work with.  I found an absolutely gorgeous white champa leaf with green as well as beautiful floral notes of champaca.  Alba michelia leaf is from the common magnolia, another lovely green/floral note. Rhododendron leaf was surprise, very fresh and somewhat citrusy. I found a myrtle and thyme, both high in linalool, an alcohol found in rosewood.   Erigeron, thuja, tarragon absolute, wormwood, violet leaf and vetiver are some other choices.

I've decided on genet, otherwise known as broom, for the heart - which goes brilliantly with rhododendron leaf.  I'm really just fleshing out the bones of the perfume but I'm off to a terrific start with agarwood and africa stone on the bottom and white champaca leaf and petitgrain sur fleurs on top.  As I work I keep trying to imagine walking through one of these topiary gardens in Europe, marveling at the intense green and the whacky, comical shapes.  I really must plan a topiary tour.





Fougere Workshop

Create the scent of the forrest floor.
There has been some interest amongst a small group of students in doing another Fougere Workshop.  I'm so happy to teach this class again on Sunday, April 12th, 1-4pm.

Fougere is a fragrance family that came into fashion towards the end of the 19th C.  The word means fern, which makes it a fantasy category seeing how ferns don't really have a fragrance.  Fougere's are meant to smell like the forrest floor and, to my understanding, must have three ingredients:  lavender, oakmoss and a coumarin note (found in tonka bean, hay, sweet clover, etc.).  Often herbs like geranium, linalool rich rosewood and more assertive notes like patchouli are added but it's the careful consideration of the other ingredients that makes the fougere your own.

In class we'll explore the genre and sample many perfumes including the original Fougere Royale and Jicky - the vanguards of the classification -  along with samples from some of the best natural perfumers working today. You'll be choosing from materials like tonka bean, sweet clover, concretes of lavender, geranium and clary sage, several lavender absolutes and essential oils, cedarmoss, cassia and ho wood.  You'll have the opportunity to create two perfumes.  $25 extra to make a third, time considering.

Sunday, April 12th, 1-4pm.  You can register here.

You can see the coumarin crystals forming on these tonka beans.
Once oakmoss is harvested it rests for seven years to develop it's wet forrest scent.
Clover also contain coumarins.
Lavender, one of the key ingredients in a fougere, also contains coumarins.

My Etsy Store Gets a Scripted French Facelift

I've seen other Etsy stores using vintage letters as a backdrop for their products and I always thought they were really beautiful.  I've been wanting to change up my product photos so I went searching on Etsy for some antique letters.  I found two stores that sell letters from France from the turn of the last century.  One was Oscar Naylor in Canada.  The letter came gorgeously wrapped in vintage letters, the most beautiful package my mailbox has seen in a long time.  I struggled to open it and keep it intact so I could save it.  The other store was French Manufacture in France.  From them I bought two packages of several letters.  They're all written out in script with pen and ink, a harkening back to a a time when quite a lot more effort went into correspondence



MIDNIGHT GARDEN



Samples of Eau Who and Noir










                        





Nice Write Up in Crain's New York

I've been remiss in posting this lovely article about myself and my perfume business in Crain's New York.  I was lucky enough to be contacted by the magazine for the interview.  They sent over a photographer with more equipment than I thought would fit into my studio or that he and his assistant could possibly use.  They used every bit of it!

Review of Flora on EauMG

Once again the lovely Victoria Jent  of EauMG has reviewed one of my perfumes, Flora.

"Flora is a dusty, aromatic lavender in a haze of clove ciggie smoke. It opens with peach skin and spice. The heart is like a delicate, peachy green carnation smoothed by a soft, milky sandalwood and boozy vanilla. Flora dries down to a mélange of close-wearing exotic, earthy woods."

 Many thanks to Victoria for her kind words and enthusiasm for the much maligned and neglected carnation.

Lovely Review of Sol de la Foret

Victoria Jent of the fragrance and beauty blog EauMG.net has written a lovely review of Sol de la Foret.

"Sol de la Foret is a dark as a forest during the new moon. The heart introduces a spicy, clove-like carnation floral with a musky sage, still retaining a balance of bitter and sweet.The dry-down radiates warmth with a dry oakmoss and hay – sweet and musky. Overall, the fragrance has a lush vintage feel and to me, this is absolutely gorgeous."

I'm over the moon (although a bit tardy in posting this!).
Thanks Victoria!

Fragrance Parties and Private Classes

A private class in my home studio.
I've been asked to do quite a few private classes and perfume parties this past season.  I'm getting calls from a lot of brides (and bridesmaids) to book showers and bachelorette parties and some event planners have gotten in touch to book private affairs.  I was recently hired to do a private party in a 42nd floor three bedroom penthouse suite at the Ritz Carlton.  Some days I just love my job!

I can accommodate five or possibly six students in my home studio in Park Slope.  There is a two hour minimum booking at $350, $125 per hour thereafter.   Parties offsite are $500 minimum for two hours plus $25 per head.  Call (718)788-6480 or email info@herbalalchemy.net for more information or to book a party or class.

Flora, a Perfume with Carnation at it's Heart

Carnations, underrated and maligned, are actually one of my favorite floral fragrances. Not the mass produced carnations available in every florist shop and displayed in funeral arrangements across the country. Those carnations have been hybridized to be big and showy but most have no scent whatsoever, and if they do it's faint and rather stinky. I'm talking about old fashioned carnations like the ones my mother grew in her garden when I was growing up. At that tender young age I wasn't put off yet by the florist industry so my appreciation of them was pure. 

 I was approached recently by the floral industry giant, Teleflora. They were possibly interested in having a fragrance created to celebrate a new line of arrangements they were launching. At one time in my career I was a floral designer working for high end designers in New York City. We cringed at companies like Teleflora and FTD and the use of carnations in general. At first when I got the offer I wondered how I could reconcile my disdain for mass produced arrangements with the possibility of being hired to create a fragrance. Alas the job fell through almost as soon as it was offered but the challenge stayed with me. It became a quest to create the most beautiful carnation floral fragrance I could muster. 

The result is Flora, a spicy, earthy floral with carnation at it's heart. Mitti, an Indian attar of sandalwood saturated in baked earth, is the foundation of the perfume. Warm vanilla absolute bonds with the vanilla notes in the carnations to bring it's sweetness all the way into the dry down. A touch of agarwood co2 and dark patchouli add darker and more tenacious nuances. 

Clove bud absolute brings out the spiciness in the carnation which is sweetened just a bit with orange blossom concrete and apricot isolate. Wild lavender adds a floral aspect to the top with blood orange lending a touch of sweetness and linalool rich ho wood acts as a bright and warm invitation. 

"Flora evokes the kind of fairy that hovered around Juliet's bed just after Romeo left. Flora has Juliet feeling sultry and lustful, shimmering in that innocent radiance at its fullest when a maiden has found her naughtiest dreams come true." Victoria O. 
samples are available


Top notes: ho wood, wild lavender, blood orange 
Heart notes: carnation absolute, clove bud absolute, apricot natural isolate, orange blossom concrete 
Base notes: mitti attar, vanilla absolute, agarwood absolute, dark patchouli
You can purchase Flora from my website, herbalalchemy.net or my Etsy store, etsy.com/shop/herbalalchemy.



Lights! Camera! Action!



I was recently interviewed by the lovely Christie Clements for Cosmo Times.  Christie and I made a perfume together while the cameras rolled.  It was my first time being interviewed on camera and I learned a lot!  For all of you wondering what a custom perfume consultation is like...


Gift Certificates for Custom Perfume Consultations

Give the gift of a private perfume consultation!  You'll be giving a unique and very personal experience.  Your gifted one will learn how to blend a selection of scents into their own personal perfume. In a step by step process they'll be able to choose from over one hundred essential oils, absolutes and concretes, some rare and exotic, to create a fragrance that is uniquely theirs. This fun, sometimes surprising and sometimes revealing journey into scent memories and preferences will result in a perfume that is theirs alone, one that works with their individual body chemistry and reflects their personality and interests. 

I've teamed with clients to create fragrances for different moods and occasions, fragrances that evoke memories or the unforgettable qualities of a particular location or experience. A perfect idea for the bride to be.  This is a one-on-one consultation in Julianne’s studio. 

$175.00 for an hour and a half consultation, includes 1/4 ounce vial of perfume.  Call (718)788-6480 or email at info@herbalalchemy.net to make arrangements.

Fougere Workshop


The fragrance family known as the fougere is a fantasy concept meant to capture the scent of the natural habitat of ferns - the forest floor.  The principal notes are oakmoss, tonka bean and lavender. In this workshop we’ll be sampling Fougere Royale and Jicky, the instigators of this fragrance family, as well as a careful selection of the botanical world’s best perfumers.  Each student will create two perfumes using a collection of oils I’ve assembled for the the occasion including tonka bean, sweet clover, hay and a selection of lavender essential oils, absolutes and concretes.  This will also be an opportunity to work with a few rare and precious oils such as orris root, ambrette, choya nak, ho wood, buddahwood and wild sweet orange.


Fougere Workshop
Saturday, November 16th
1:00 to 4:00
$150 includes all materials
Park Slope, Brooklyn
Call (718)788-6480 or send an email to info@herbalalchemy.net for more information or register here.

Midnight Garden

My newest perfume, Midnight Garden, is the joint creation of the lovely women of The Robert Allen Group and myself.  The Group has designed a new line of fabrics inspired by hanging orchids, twisting vines and hidden temples.  What they described to me was a rainforest, with orchids hanging in the trees, thick with fragrance in the night air.  Wild sweet orange, petitgrain and coriander CO2 greet the nose, sitting on top of a jasmine, neroli and honey heart.  At the bottom of this sultry midnight perfume is the vanilla orchid with peru balsam and oakmoss to finish.

Midnight Garden


Cocktail Lab, Summer 2012

Lychee vodka being filtered
When Lucy Raubertas, the writer behind Indieperfumes and the inspiration for the Clarimonde Project, asked me if I'd be interested in conjuring up some cocktails for a book release party for a perfume writer I had to say yes.  The connection between fragrance and cocktail crafting has become somewhat seamless lately.  My liquor cabinet is overflowing with fragrant tinctured vodkas, some of which have wound up in a few of my cologne experiments this summer.

After some seriously delicious cocktails at NoMad with Lucy, the author Alyssa Harad, and Maria McElroy of Aroma M Perfumes it was decided that Maria and I would come up with two cocktails based on two of her perfumes.  She decided on Geisha Blanche and Geisha Green, Blanche being a fresh, summery fragrance of white flowers and lychee, while Green is a creative take on absinthe, although mellowed with black currant, mandarin and violet.

Lychees macerating in vodka for First Blush
After our first meeting we had a general idea of how the two drinks would be and had a list of possible ingredients to have on hand for Cocktail Lab.  I brought in veteran Lab assistant Lori Firpo to sit in with Maria, Lucy and I.

For Geisha Blanche we settled on lychee vodka to start.  After struggling to find a good mixer that would still fit the fragrance profile we settled on champagne with a little lychee juice.  We decided on tuberose and jasmine to mimic the white flowers in the perfume which are added to the drink as well as misted over the top before serving.  We call it First Blush

Black currant vodka was the basis for our rendition of Geisha Green.  Boylan's Creme Soda was the perfect compliment and picked up the tonka note in the perfume beautifully.  Wormwood and the natural isolate alpha ionone (with the characteristic scent of violet) were added to tone down the sweetness of the drink and pick up the absinthe notes of the perfume.  Meet Jaded!




First Blush

one jigger lychee vodka
one generous jigger lychee juice (Ceres brand)
one jigger champagne
two drops tuberose dilution, 5%
spray of tuberose and jasmine
Combine the vodka, juice and dilutions in a shaker, mix well and add champagne.  Pour into a martini glass and spray with tuberose and jasmine.




Jaded

one jigger black currant vodka
two ounces Boyland Creme Soda
one drop alpha ionone dilution, 10%
one drop wormwood dilution, 5%
Combine the ingredients in a cocktail shaker, shake well and serve strained in a martini glass. 




Black currant vodka is made by finely chopping 1/3 cup dried black currants and pouring one cup of vodka over them in a jar with a tight fitting lid.  Shake daily and macerate for up to one month.  Strain and store in an airtight bottle.

Lychee vodka is made by peeling and chopping 1/3 cup fresh lychees (including any juice) and placing them in a jar with a tight fitting lid.  Pour one cup vodka over and shake daily for up to two weeks.  Strain and store.

Natural Perfume Workshop with Mandy Aftel

Mandy's scent organ
I recently attended a most informative, creative and sensual workshop in the art of natural perfume in the home studio of Mandy Aftel, the premier natural perfumer and author the the natural perfumers bible, Essence and Alchemy.  Over the years I've taken several perfume and aromatherapy workshops but the difference here is, aside from all of the practical information (of which there was plenty), it was also akin to taking an art class.  Indeed, Mandy has elevated natural perfume from hippie fragrance to an art form and my appreciation of her as an artist grew throughout the weekend.  Her teaching method was simple and straight from art school:  a morning lecture explaining concepts and exploring materials and techniques followed by a blending session where we each made our own perfume.  We were then critiqued and spent some time adjusting our formulas and critiqued again.  Her critiques were accurate but delivered gently and inevitably we all made better perfumes the second time around.

I came away with a better understanding of the shape and texture of a perfume and with a nose tuned in to the subtle differences in aromas, better able to distinguish between a good quality oil from it's lesser counterpart.  Indeed, my sense of smell is heightened overall.  As I walk down the streets of my Brooklyn neighborhood in Spring I can pick up subtle scents wafting in the breeze.  I came across a vase of fresh peonies the other day and could distinctly pick up the variance in the scent of each blossom.

I also had the opportunity to smell things I had only read about and things I have searched for to no avail.  One such oil is Flouve, a sweet, herbaceous tobacco-like oil that is so rich and complex that one keeps finding notes in it.  Another is Oud, a rare and precious oil from the Agarwood tree, one of the most expensive perfume ingredients around at about $1000 to $1400 an ounce.  Mandy collects antique oils as well which she hunts the globe for.  Antique patchouli oil is rich and complex and bears little resemblance to the ubiquitous hippie aroma.

The workshop was a wonderful, creative and expansive experience which I'll be drawing from to create new fragrances for Herbal Alchemy.  I'm so grateful for the opportunity to study with Mandy and to get to know a little better this warm, generous and dedicated teacher and perfumer.
A selection of top notes from the perfume organ.

A Rave Review!

I'm so thrilled to share this lovely review from Trish at Scent Hive for my Garden Walk perfume.  Trish has been kind and generous with her words and I'm thrilled to bits.

Garden Walk #1 is a perfume commissioned by Jessica Warren from Brownstone Brooklyn Garden District.  The fragrance was inspired by the flowers in the group's 13th Annual Garden Walk. The tour included 15 private gardens as well as several vibrant community gardens in the historical district of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. 

Earthy notes such as orris root, ambrette and hay represent the fertile soil of these gardens, floral middle notes such as tuberose and neroli round it out and it ends with top notes of petitgrain and elemi. Even the bees are represented in this formula with the addition of honey absolute.

The perfume is $45 for 20 ml, or a sample vial for $3, and can be purchased on my website at www.herbalalchemy.net or my Etsy store.

Custom Perfume Blending Workshop

In this three hour workshop students will learn the basics of blending and formulation to create their own custom perfume.  In a lovely intimate setting each student will gain an understanding of basic techniques and the raw materials used to create their own fragrance.  Participants will leave with a quarter ounce bottle of their creation.  No prior knowledge is necessary.

Saturday, November 6th
1 - 4pm
Park Slope, Brooklyn

Class is limited to five students
Cost:  $150, includes all materials
RSVP to info@herbalalchemy.net