Osmanthus is a flower that smells like fruit. Ripe apricot first, then peach, with a skin of soft leather underneath.
The plant is Osmanthus fragrans, an evergreen shrub native to southern China. It sits in the same botanical family as jasmine and lilac, the Oleaceae. Chinese growers have prized its tiny golden flowers for centuries, mostly to scent and flavour tea.
The apricot and peach come from a molecule called gamma-decalactone. A group of compounds called ionones add a powdery, violet softness. Under all of it is that suede-and-leather tone, which is what stops osmanthus from being just another sweet fruit note.
Capturing it is the expensive part. Osmanthus absolute is made by solvent extraction, and the yield is tiny. It takes roughly 3,000 kg of flowers to produce one kilo of absolute. That puts pure osmanthus among the priciest florals a perfumer can reach for.
Here is the bit the marketing skips. Because the natural absolute costs so much, most osmanthus you smell is built partly from those isolated molecules, the decalactone and the ionones, rather than a jar of pure extract. Done well, you cannot tell. It gives an osmanthus that stays stable, stays affordable, and still reads as apricot and leather on skin hours later.
In a formula osmanthus is a heart note. It gives fruit and body to florals and fruity blends without tipping into sugar.
You will find osmanthus in the heart of our Spritz, a fizzy fruit-cocktail scent, and in the opening of Monarch, our warm tobacco and vanilla. Both are UK-made sprays at 35% extrait. See more in the Lorenzo Pazzaglia collection.
