The olfactory families
Citrus, floral, woody, oriental… The perfumers’ secret vocabulary for classifying scents.
A language for smells
How do you talk about a smell, that elusive thing? Perfumers invented a language: olfactory families. Like literary genres, they group perfumes by character — not by ingredients, but by sensation.
The citrus family sparkles: bergamot, lemon, neroli. The florals bloom: rose, jasmine, iris. The fougères sing green freshness — lavender and coumarin — while the chypres marry bergamot and oakmoss in dark elegance.
Then come the families of depth: the woods (sandalwood, cedar, vetiver), the orientals and ambers (vanilla, resins, incense, oud), the musks and the gourmands (tonka bean, caramel). It is on this territory — woody and oriental — that Aquilaria made its home.
The accord, or the art of blending
No family lives alone: perfumers create accords — marriages of materials that give birth to a new facet. A rose over an oud base? A "floriental". A leather softened by iris? A suave woody. Reading an olfactory pyramid is already composing.
