Day 55 ~ One Year, One Nose

Orange Blossom Absolute/Tunisia ~ White Lotus Aromatics


White Lotus Aromatics is one of my favorite places to purchase perfumery raw materials. The product quality is top-drawer, consistent, and the customer service is the best. Often when I place an order for restock, I will order samples of exotics to round out the palette. WLA allows up to ten samples per order, which is more than enough. One word of caution, though. If your sample turns out to be something that totally blows your mind, you'd better get back on the site and order a full size because those kinds of things are known to go quickly.

At the end of last summer or beginning of last fall WLA received in stock a shipment of Tunisian orange blossom absolute. I was encouraged on several fronts to order some but due to the circumstances of my life at that time, I was unable to do so. Imagine how surprised I was when winter began and I received a parcel from a friend which included a sample of that orange blossom absolute I coveted so. Let's just say I was blown away. It was perhaps the most intensely floral orange blossom I had ever encountered, but there was something else about it, something that deepened the scent, something that the blossoms' scent seemed to pull from the earth itself, a vital piece of what it needed to make it this special. So after hours of sniffing scent strips drenched in the oil, hours of opening the bottle for a sniff, I "found" the piece of the puzzle that made this orange blossom absolute so much different (and better) than others I had experienced. In the bottom of the scent, way down deep where the dregs lie, that bit of something the blossoms dug from the earth shimmers ever so brightly, it is an earthy-rooty shade, a piece of Gaia broken off, and its scent is reminiscent of angelica.