Live Smelling Session: Raleigh, NC

SMELLING THE Roses in Raleigh, NC

Welcome to our first live smelling session! On May 8, we visited Raleigh, NC to meet some of our customers and share our love and knowledge of fragrance through an interactive smelling session. The theme of our smelling session was rose — because May is the harvest season for the most noble and highest quality rose in perfumery — Rosa Centifolia, Rose de Mai (May Rose) — which blooms just once a year in the South of France (around Grasse, the birthplace of perfumery). The goal was to smell individual ingredients and then understand how those raw materials are used in our formulations and translate into finished products. We started the evening with rose inspired cocktails and mocktails: The Rose Spritz Aperol 2 oz — the bitter orange aperitif Sparkling Rosé 3 oz — fruity, dry base Club Soda 1 oz — adds fizz Rose Water (to taste) 1–5 drops — floral aroma Garnish: Orange slice, grapefruit slice, or fresh mint (or rose petals!)

The table at our Raleigh session. Raw material vials, candles, solid perfumes, lotions, and a lot of blotters.

Rose in Perfumery

The most prized rose ingredient in all of perfumery — Rosa Centifolia, Rose de Mai (May Rose) — blooms for just a few short weeks each May in the hills above Grasse, France. Grasse is widely considered the birthplace of modern perfumery, and the May Rose is its most iconic crop. The name 'Centifolia' means 'hundred-petaled rose' and refers to the densely packed, cabbage-like blooms with impossibly delicate petals (see below). At over $25,000 per kilogram, May Rose Essential Oil is one of the most expensive materials in the fragrance industry and is most famously used in Chanel No. 05

Damask rose (Rosa × damascena) is the classic perfumery rose, prized for its rich, honeyed, spicy, and slightly fruity scent. It is especially important for making rose otto, rose absolute, and rose water, with famous growing regions including Bulgaria's Rose Valley and Turkey's Isparta region. While not as pricey as Centifolia, it still tips the scale at $9,000 per kilogram!

Cécile at the centifolia rose harvest in Grasse. Every bloom is picked by hand at dawn and brought to the distillery the same day.

From Field to Bottle

During harvest, rose flowers are picked by hand at dawn, before the heat from the sun destroys the most delicate constituents. To preserve the flower's freshness and ensure the finest quality, the distillation usually happens the same day, just a few miles from the fields. Before we got into anything on the smelling table, Cécile walked the group through the distillation process, explaining how it takes 10,000 lbs of flowers to make 1 lb of rose essential oil. That's over 2 million flowers!

Steam distillation produces a Rose Essential Oil: clean, transparent, true to the living flower. Solvent extraction yields a Rose Absolute — richer, heavier, waxier, capturing more of the flower's full complexity. Both are used in professional fragrance formulation and both smell distinctly different from each other. We smelled that difference firsthand.

Steam distillation tanks loaded with Rosa Centifolia at a distillery near Grasse. These run the same day the flowers are harvested.

The Rose Raw Materials We Evaluated

Before we touched a single finished fragrance oil, we worked through five rose raw materials on blotters. This is always the part of the session that surprises people — because some of these materials don't smell like "finished rose" on their own. They reveal themselves in time, and in the company of other ingredients. Due to the intensity (and cost) of some of the materials, we smelled all ingredients in a 10% solution - this allows the facets of each material to display more fully.

We worked through each ingredient individually before moving on to the finished oils.

Stock Fragrance Oils With Rose

Once we'd moved through the raw materials, we turned our noses to finished fragrance oils to see how these materials are used in our formulation. We started with oils that feature rose as the main component and then moved to fragrances where rose plays a supporting or background role in the fragrance construction.

Eau de Rose Style: Delicate, Elegant Floral Captures the delicate, airy floral freshness of the May Rose in bloom. Made with May Rose Essential Oil — supported by PEA to keep it affordable. Other ingredients: Bergamot EO, Jasmine Sambac Absolute, Clary Sage Absolute, Pink Peppercorn, Violet, Cedarwood Ingredients from this session May Rose EO · Phenyl Ethyl Alcohol (PEA) How We Smelled It Pure Oil · 18.0% Eau de Toilette Shop Eau de Rose

Desert Rose Style: Full-Bodied, Rich Floral Built with Geranium Bourbon and Geranyle Acetate rather than the flower extract. Fuller, deeper, more saturated with raspberry jam undertones. Other ingredients: Bergamot EO, Violet, Oud Musk, Cedarwood Ingredients from this session Geranium Bourbon EO · Geranyle Acetate How We Smelled It Pure Oil · 5.0% Candle Shop Desert Rose

Superbloom Style: 100% Plant-based floral Our all-natural, plant-based formula uses Turkish Rose Essential Oil to create a rose profile that feels grounded and warm — connected to the earth it came from. Rich, full, with an earthy depth that makes it feel distinctly botanical. Other ingredients: Coriander EO, Cananga EO Ingredients from this session Turkish Rose EO How We Smelled It Pure Oil · 0.2% Face Cream · 10.0% Solid Perfume Shop Superbloom

Smelling Fragrance Oils in (Different) Products

In the professional industry, we never evaluate pure oil. Evaluation is always done in product to fully experience how the oil behaves and displays in each particular base. For this smelling session, we smelled Stock Fragrance oils in several different formats with dosages ranging from 0.2% - 10.0%. Alcohol Solution (Eau de Toilette) Alcohol is the ideal backdrop for any fragrance oil - a 'clean' canvas that helps all facets of the formulation come to life. Fine fragrance formulation must also consider sillage and how the fragrance evolves over time! Body Lotion Lotions are typically dosed around 2.0% and can start to suppress some of the more delicate facets of the fragrance given the density of the base. Lotions and other creams can also have odors from the product formulation, which can complicate fragrance display. Face Cream Face creams are rarely dosed above 1.0% given the proximity to the nose and other sensitive areas. A little bit goes a long way! Here we smelled Superbloom as a soft, delicate floral at 0.2%. Candle IFRA guidelines are based on skin contact so candles can usually be dosed at any level. However, sometimes less is more! Not all fragrance materials burn well and sometimes the trick to getting better lift is to use less fragrance oil! Solid Perfume Solid Perfume and wax bases tend to mute some of the more delicate notes but can be a great way to deposit fragrance discreetly and over time.

Everything laid out — raw materials, finished oils, and all five product formats.

Want to Host or Join Our Next Session?

Nathan and Cécile, before the guests arrived.

We love meeting our customers and sharing our knowledge about fragrance. Please join our mailing list to be notified of our next smelling session. Want to host a session for your own customers or request a visit to somplace near you? Get in Touch

Shop the Oils from This Session

All five fragrance oils are available with no minimums, full IFRA documentation, and SDS.

Behind the Scenes

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