One molecule does most of the work in eucalyptus, and it has a name: 1,8-cineole, also called eucalyptol. In oil from the common blue gum it can make up to 80 percent of the whole thing.
Eucalyptus oil is steam-distilled from the leaves and young twigs of the tree, most often Eucalyptus globulus, the blue gum, native to south-eastern Australia and Tasmania and now farmed for oil in Portugal, Spain and China. Fresh leaf gives up only one or two percent of its weight as oil, so it takes a lot of leaf.
The smell is instantly familiar. Cool, sharp, penetrating, a little medicinal, with that clean camphor edge you know from a chest rub or a steam room. It reads as fresh air and clean skin rather than as a flower or a fruit.
That is also the trap. Eucalyptus is loud, and it can turn a scent into cough sweets in seconds if a perfumer is heavy-handed. So it goes in at the top, in small amounts, a cooling flash that lifts citrus and herbs before it burns off.
Because pure cineole is cheap and reliable, the eucalyptus in most fragrances is the isolated molecule rather than a full leaf oil. That keeps the freshness clean and consistent from one bottle to the next.
Eucalyptus is a top note, at home in aromatic, green and marine scents.
The cool eucalyptus lift runs through our Riviera, a Mediterranean cypress-and-driftwood scent and our take on Tom Ford Costa Azzurra, and through the opening of our coastal Rock Bloom. Both are UK-made 35% extrait sprays. More in the Tom Ford collection.
