The First Rule of Perfumery: Know Your Raw Materials | EPI 002 Podcast All Roads Lead to Aroma

The podcast 'All paths lead to aroma' is a podcast sponsored by Jarilo. In this podcast, Mariana, the founder of Jarilo, explores the world of perfumery and tries to discover how perfumes are made.

This article is the transcript of EPI 002. The first rule of perfumery: Know your raw materials

[Beginning of transcript]

↳In this episode, I will talk about the number 1 rule of perfumery - “Know your raw materials,” but what does it mean to know your raw materials? It means knowing their smell, their volatility, and their behavior in a formula.

↳To know the smell of a raw material, we need to train our sense of smell and expand our vocabulary.

↳We can do a simple exercise with things we have at home, for example, smell a lemon and write on a piece of paper what that lemon smells like. Very important: without saying it smells like lemon.

↳There is a natural difficulty in describing smells; we lack the vocabulary, so we use words that are more connected to other senses or situations.

↳For example, I can say that my lemon has a fresh, acidic, sour, juicy, slightly sweet, crystalline, structured, transparent, and light smell.

↳In this exercise of describing a smell, it is very important to write down the words we used to describe it. This way, we create a personal database, and over time, we can make associations between smells and words.

↳It is also very important to understand that there is no right or wrong; each person will describe a smell in a different way and with different words.

↳To study raw materials, we need half a dozen ingredients and also paper strips, like those usually found in perfumeries, and we do the following:

↳We start by dipping the tip of the paper strip into the bottle. Preferably without knowing which raw material we are studying. What I usually do is randomly grab a bottle and cover the label. At this stage, it's important not to smell directly from the bottle.

↳We smell, describe the smell, write everything down, and save our notes.

↳It is easier to study materials if they are diluted in alcohol. In most cases, a 10% dilution is sufficient; if the material is very strong, a 1% dilution might be useful.

↳If you feel you can no longer smell, your nose is saturated; smell your own skin, in an area that has not been perfumed. This will serve as a reset for your sense of smell. There's no point in smelling coffee beans; that's a myth and won't clear your sense of smell.

↳In the next episode, I will give examples of raw materials and where you can buy them.

↳To study volatility, we will smell the paper strips we used in the previous exercise several times and over time, meaning we smell them after half an hour, after two hours, after eight hours, and the next day.

↳We will realize that there are materials we cannot smell on the paper strip after just half an hour; these are the most volatile materials, which have lighter molecules, and others that we can still smell the next day; these are less volatile, with larger molecules.

↳ I need to remember to tell you to write everything down

↳With this exercise, we can understand, in addition to the volatility of the material, its evolution and if there is any transformation over time.

↳Understanding the behavior of an ingredient in a formula requires time and experimentation; it's not something I can cover in this episode but something I want to do in the future.

↳The sense of smell is very connected to memory and emotion. A smell can transport us through time, remind us of people, moments, and places. And, although we all have the ability to perceive aromas, olfactory training is a skill that can be developed and refined – whether to create perfumes, scented candles, or simply to better enjoy the aromas around us.

↳We can develop our sense of smell in several ways; one is simply to pay attention to the smells we encounter throughout the day. It's a simple thing that we rarely do. We can also take a walk through our neighborhood and write down all the smells we encounter.

↳Developing the habit of being attentive to the smells around us will help our brain get used to recognizing and identifying different odors.

↳In the next episode, I will study some raw materials and do the exercise of smelling and describing them.

↳Thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast "All paths lead to aroma." If you enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe, share with friends, leave a comment, or send an email to todososcaminhosvaodaraoaroma@gmail.com.

↳I need to ask people to email me if they try smelling something.

Until next time

[End of transcript]

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