Most of the cedar in modern perfumery comes from a tree that is not a cedar.
The workhorse material is Cedarwood Virginia oil, steam distilled from the heartwood of Juniperus virginiana. That is a juniper. True cedars sit in the genus Cedrus, and only one of them, Atlas cedar, gets distilled in any real volume for scent. The two smell different and behave differently in a formula.
The chemistry explains the smell. Virginian cedarwood is built almost entirely from sesquiterpenes, and the ISO specification for the oil sets alpha-cedrene at 20 to 35%, thujopsene at 10 to 25%, and cedrol at 16 to 25%. Cedrol is the part that reads as dry pencil shavings, and it is the part that stays on skin longest.
So Virginian cedar is dry, clean and a little balsamic. Atlas cedar is the softer, fattier one, closer to the smell of an old wardrobe. Neither is smoky on its own. When a cedar fragrance smells of bonfire, something else in the bottle is doing that.
Here is the bit a note list hides. Natural cedarwood oil is quiet. It does not project, and batches vary with the sawmill the wood came from. Perfumers get round this with materials designed to do the same job louder and more predictably: cedryl acetate, Vertofix, Cedramber. A label still just says cedar.
Cedar is a base note, which means its job is structural. It sits under everything and gives the rest something to hold on to. Chanel put cedar in the base of Bleu de Chanel next to sandalwood, vetiver and incense, where it reads as clean and mineral. Dior put Virginia cedar under iris, ambrette and vetiver in Homme Intense, where the same wood turns powdery and soft. One material, two results. That is what a good base note does.
Both of those live in our range. Bleu Royale is our take on Bleu de Chanel, and Homme Intenso is our take on Dior Homme Intense, both UK made sprays at 35% concentration. There is more in the best Bleu de Chanel dupes in the UK and the best Chanel dupes in the UK.
