Leather

I've been experimenting with creating leather accords, pushing the leathers toward gourmand and simple rankness.

The gourmand leather accord is pretty interesting. Among many of its components is valerian root tincture. Valerian, as supremely rank as it is, serves a useful purpose in the leather blend by bringing in a funkiness, an unusual well-aged cheese aroma. Thankfully the funk only emerges briefly before settling down to a dry straw/warm hay-like scent. Well, I like it anyway. It's real in a way that sweet ethereal blends are not.

To make this leather 'gourmand' or edible, I added coffee tincture and butter CO2. Butter CO2 is a strange bird. Voracious, actually. The top notes of butter smell like milk-fed baby's breath -- healthy baby's breath, sweet and fresh.

So, in retrospect, I see that I've built an accord reminiscent of cheese, breath and coffee.

But not really. Also in the gourmand blend ~ tobacco, patchouli, choya loban, nagarmotha, two vetyvers, ambrette, saffron, linden and fig tincture.

One observation I'd like to point out -- valerian and aloeswood, an aged aloeswood, smell very similar during the opening ~ aloeswood is stinky like dirty socks or aged cheese with a resinous, musky undertone which dries down sweet and powdery and warm to finish off with a final musky scent, while valerian opens with stinky dirty socks and cheese, and dries down to warm, sun-bleached hay. Interesting.