Nuts: Notes on Notes | Australian Perfume Junkies
Hello APJ, Welcome to our small scale collaboration project. Old Herbaceous (OH) of Serenity Now Scents and Sensibilities and I will be doing a monthly post on different perfume notes. We are not perfumers but aficionados of fragrance. So lots of our information will come with links for further reading or text references. We are learning as you are learning, or refreshing.
YAY! Old Herbaceous picked Nuts for us this month from a list that I liked the idea of.
YES, I’m running terribly late with it today. Somehow Notes on Notes kept slipping off my To Do list and now I’m WAY OVERDUE!!! GAH!!
Edit: Hilariously Old Herbaceous forgot too. We decided it could wait a week to now. PHEW! So, now I’ve had a little time to get this together. Still, only a very short introduction to nuts, enjoy.
What are Nuts?
OK, so this has been really interesting. Though nuts are one of my favourite food groups most of the things I thought of as nuts are other things. Peanuts and tonka are legumes, yes like peas. IKR! Then there is a branch of things we call nuts that are drupes. Drupe is an outer fleshy fruit surrounding a shell/pit/casing with a seed inside. Peaches, plums, and cherries are drupes. So are walnuts, almonds, and pecans where we eat the seed inside the pit instead of the fruit!
A nut, botanically, is a hard-shelled pod containing the fruit and seed of the plant The fruit doesn’t open to release the seed to the world, like chestnuts, hazelnuts, and acorns.
To make it all so much easier for me; today I’m including all the things that I originally thought of as nuts.
Most of my definition here has been cobbled together from an edited SeriousEats piece.
How do Nuts smell?
So more interesting learning: Almonds are a gourmand bitter-sweet accord and are often created using the oils of cherries, peaches and prunes.
Almond, argan, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios and walnuts are all known as tree nuts. Honestly I couldn’t find very much information on how they are used that wasn’t either a seller or scientific treaty. Funny thing is EVERYTHING said they smell nutty. Thanks for the help.
On a personal note nuts have been a favourite go-to since childhood. We were often given a small bowl or Tupperware container of nuts to keep us going till the next meal. I also travel with a container of them just in case the plane crashes and we need to survive (I know, crazy, but we all have to do our thing to get through yeah?). So the smell of nuts is nostalgic, satisfying and safety to me.
How are Nuts used in perfumery?
Nuts seem to be used to add unusual gourmand touches. The can give depth and add breadth. They are also feeling quite popular at the moment.
While finding nuts in all spaces of the perfume pyramid, many of the oft used base note compounds have a nutty facet. This is becoming more noticeable in designer menswear and some niche. Most are used as part of the ensemble, a bit player rather than star. I suppose too much nut would be a weird thing to smell of.
In which perfumes will you find Nuts?
Caron Aimez Moi Comme Je Suis
Straight out of the gate Aimez Moi Comme Je Suis is a nutty beauty. Even during the opening ginger/citrus fizz the nuts are front and centre. They hold this whole fragrance together and make me smile whenever I wear it. Thing is, it’s such a rich nuttiness and on me the coming together of hazelnut and tonka creates an almost Ferrero Rocher scent experience. It’s so bloody delicious I want to eat myself up. I often wonder why this gem never got super hyped. It’s so much better than it ever needed to be, maybe it was just over the heads of the bro-fumistas that get crazy for stuff.
Dry down adds a dark pipe tobacco to the mix. It doesn’t take over and there’s still that Ferrero Rocher choc-nut. The oily grassiness of vetiver waits till almost the last gasp of Aimez Moi Comme Je Suis to make itself known and gives the dry down another level of interest.
Can we also talk about the slightly reimagined Caron bottle. YUM! Hefty, comfortable in my hand, love the dark metal lid and front strip. So cool. Can so easily imagine this sitting on someones dresser and being their go to, signature scent. Not so out of the ballpark as to be weird but definitely a cut above almost everyone else.
Sarah Jessica Parker Stash SJP
This is one of the best releases by a celebrity. For me anyway. SJP is always good on the fragrances but this and Lovely are just outstanding. In the past I’ve always considered Stash a peppery woods explosion that heads towards amber. Simple, comfy, wears well and often gets the compliments (yeah, I know they don’t matter but seriously, it’s nice when others like my perfume). Anyway, last Sunday my dear friend Anna Maria was wearing Stash and it hit me. There’s a nuttiness that adds a nutty creamy gourmand facet to Stash that I’d always thought was sandalwood. On Anna Maria the nuts popped beautifully. When complimenting how she smelled and finding out it was Stash I headed home and straight for the note lists. I’d been expecting her to tell me some uber lux niche brand TBH, that’s how good she smelled.
So that’s how Stash got the gong for this post.
Please go check out Serenity Now Scents and Sensibilities and see what OH has to add to the Notes on Notes about Nuts.
What are your favourite fragrances with Nuts listed in the notes?
Portia xx