One of the most appreciated drinks when I was very little was prepared from fresh elderflowers (Sambucus nigra) mixed with water, sugar and lemon slices, macerated in a fresh place for several days and then served very cold, with ice cubes. For many years the smell of elderflowers intrigued me, and even more the rich and delicious "extract" that preserves and intensifies the scent of the flowers.The natural fragrance is very floral, fruity, rosy, with shades of honey and sweet herbs / hay and something that suggests linden blossoms. In fact, it is a very rosy scent that reminds me some aspects of the litchi, the fruity heart of the rose jelly and less the flower. Cis Rose oxide and damascenone beta are present in important amounts but also nerol oxide, linalool and lower fatty aldehydes that bring a green-fruity note (like C9). The flowers show also a very delicate orris aspect with some tobacco, amine-like note (like in hawthorn), licorice and hay. It seems that some molecules known as dihydroedulan (found in traces in passion fruit and tobacco) might be responsible for the characteristic note, when combined to damascenone, but there is also another special molecule - hotrienol (floral fresh fruity with a melon aspect).
The elderflower note (but also the elderberry flavor) is not very much explored by the perfumer, to my knowledge and I do not know a perfume built around this note. There was a floral water in the XIXth century at Guerlain (Eau de Sureau), but it seems to be more a cosmetic product. The elderflower accord is also mentioned in Crystal Aura (Avon) and Un Parfum d'Ailleurs et Fleurs (The Different company).
Besides the scent of the flowers, there is now on the market an absolute from Robertet that I discovered quite late. It presents a delicious sweet, hay-herbaceous-coumarine, tobacco and confiture note with some new gourmand notes and dark honey wrapped in smoke and herbs. Both the flower and the absolute have some notes that reminds me the dark grapes, their juice and some very sweet wines.
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
