There’s something undeniably luxurious about sandalwood’s warm, earthy aroma—it adds a sense of refinement and depth to any fragrance blend. With its delicate floral woodiness, it’s an incredibly versatile and alluring base note, making it a favourite across a wide range of scent profiles.

The Sandalwood Tree

Sandalwood refers to several species of trees within the Santalum genus, all known for their dense, fine-grained wood and rich, aromatic scent. When people talk about sandalwood, they’re usually referring to true sandalwood, or white sandalwood (Santalum album)—a variety native to India, but also found across Southeast Asia, Australia, and the South Pacific. Uniquely semi-parasitic, the sandalwood tree grows by drawing water and nutrients from the roots of neighbouring trees. Its prized heartwood contains alpha-santalol and beta-santalol—the key compounds responsible for its distinctive fragrance and therapeutic properties.

Due to slow growth rates—taking around 30 years to reach a commercially viable size—sandalwood is often harvested faster than it can be replenished. As a result, pure sandalwood is one of the most expensive woods in the world, with demand frequently outstripping supply. Both the wood and roots contain a golden-hued oil that’s extracted through steam distillation. The heartwood is ground into powder, placed in distillation stills, and exposed to steam. As the mixture condenses, the precious sandalwood oilseparates from the water, ready to be refined and used in fragrance.

Sandalwood Through the Ages

For thousands of years, sandalwood has been revered for its fragrance and therapeutic benefits. Across cultures and continents, it has played a central role in religious, medicinal, and everyday life. In Buddhism, sandalwood incense is burned during prayer and meditation for its calming effects. The Ancient Egyptians imported sandalwood for embalming and as an offering to the gods. In Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, sandalwood has been used for its anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, and antimicrobial properties, assisting with wound healing, digestion, and skin conditions. Known to lower blood pressure and cortisol levels, sandalwood is widely used in aromatherapy to promote relaxation, ease anxiety, and improve sleep.

Sandalwood has been a cornerstone of fragrance creation since the early days of Arabic and Indian perfumery. Loved for its warm, woody, and balsamic aroma, it exudes an unmistakable sense of exotic luxury. Beyond its timeless scent, sandalwood oil acts as a fixative in perfumes—helping to stabilise blends and enhance longevity by anchoring more delicate notes that might otherwise fade too quickly. While the raw wood has historically been used to craft ornate carvings, furniture, and decorative fans, today, sandalwood’s most cherished form remains its rich, lingering fragrance—a scent that continues to captivate and inspire.

Air Aroma’s Sandalwood Gold Fragrance

Fresh, Green, Woody

Australian Sandalwood, Leather, Fennel, Cardamom, Violet, Cedar

Golden hues meander through a deep cavern. Heat of charred ash casts a warm glow on a vast wall of intricate formations. Innate wisdoms reverberate like a smoky silage of woods and spices. Gentle and warm but dark and sultry.

With its warm, rich allure, Sandalwood Gold is a truly luxurious aroma oil, favoured by hospitality, retail, and high-end clients worldwide. Its deep, woody fragrance makes it a popular choice for seasonal scenting, particularly in autumn and winter. Sandalwood Gold is diffused in some of the world’s most prestigious hotels and entertainment destinations including Mondrian Park Avenue and Resorts World Las Vegas. Wherever it’s featured, this fragrance brings an unmistakable sense of elegance and warmth.

A timeless and captivating choice, sandalwood is perfect for those who appreciate its natural depth, soft spiciness, and enduring charm. Experience its beauty in Air Aroma’s Sandalwood Gold, Moonshot, and Pomelo Pulp fragrances, or create a custom signature scent inspired by sandalwood’s many facets.

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The ability to discern and appreciate various fragrances is a learned skill and one that anybody can practice to enrich their sensory skills or better comprehend fragrances. Although not strictly mathematical, as describing fragrance still requires a bit of imagination, tools like Michael Edwards’ Fragrance Wheel prove to be invaluable.  While scent can be subjective, there are usually general ideas or themes that one can pick up on. Categorizing and naming fragrance components helps to make associations between different fragrances and understand their origin and character with greater context. The ability to discern between various fragrances can grow stronger over time with practice and deepen one’s relationship to the sensory world overall.

The Fragrance Wheel

The fragrance wheel was developed by perfumer Michael Edwards in 1983. Much like a color wheel, it groups categories together in a way that allows for overlap and gradual variances. Fragrance families or olfactive groups are based on aromatic characteristics commonly found across all fragrances. The wheel is useful in that it provides a visual representation of the olfactive spectrum.

The Fragrance Wheel uses four major scent categories: floral, oriental, woody, and fresh. Each category then has subgroups that further define these characteristics based on aromatic variances. These include floral oriental, soft oriental, woody oriental, mossy woods, dry woods, aromatic, citrus, water, green, and fruity.

The Fragrance Families

Floral

Floral fragrances encompass a beautiful bouquet of floral style scents, from delicate rose to exotic jasmine, and sweet strong tuberose that evoke elegance and femininity. Floral fragrances with powdery notes can referred to as soft floral, while sweet, spicier fragrances with notes like orange blossom falling under the subcategory floral oriental.

Find verdant floral in Ginger Flower, floral citrus in Zuri and Zesty White Tea, and floral oriental in Spice Trader.

Oriental

As floral notes move into oriental, there is a noticeable depth and complexity that appears in this style. Indulgent and luxurious, the oriental family includes notes of amber and incense in soft oriental, resins, and woodier notes like sandalwood and patchouli in woody oriental.

Explore Amber Grand, Thé Vert Oriental, and Spice Trader in Oriental scent styles.

Woody

Scent notes described as woody are often very important in the overall composition of a fragrance, as these stronger base notes help build the foundation for the scent and allow the notes to work together seamlessly. Aromatic woods include the root Vetiver, while mossy woods include notes of oakmoss. Dry woods include cedarwood and leather. Earthy, warm and sophisticated, woody notes play a prominent role in popular scent compositions.

Smell Cedar Mood, Havana, Sandalwood Gold, and Saffron Suede as some of our favorite woody styles.

Fresh  

Refreshing and clean, fresh notes offer a lightness that is found within various subcategories – often in citrus like bergamot and lemon, aquatic styles in marine notes, fruity in notes like berries, green in grass and botanical notes, and aromatic or herbal notes including lavender, mint and rosemary. Many fresh fragrances reiterate invigorating experiences in nature, like fresh morning mists or a walk along the seashore.

Discover fresh styles in Illuminate, White Tea Thyme, Sunkissed, and Iron Bark.

Using the Fragrance Wheel

View the wheel as you’re smelling fragrances to build the associations and start identifying fragrance families. Let the wheel be your guide and pinpoint the prominent notes in a fragrance composition, tracing their placement on the wheel. By understanding the primary olfactive families and their subgroups, you can decipher the composition of a scent and appreciate its nuanced character.

In the end, it’s not just about smelling the fragrance; it’s about experiencing the emotions, memories, and dreams it evokes. Just as a symphony transcends the individual music notes on a page, a fragrance exceeds the mere combination of its notes.

Explore Air Aroma’s range of fragrances to discover unique, elevated scent compositions.

The post The Fragrance Wheel: A Guide to Identifying Scents appeared first on Air Aroma Australia.

The Fig Tree

Scientifically identified as Ficus Carica, the fig tree is native to the Mediterranean region and has been cultivated for thousands of years. Yielding hundreds to thousands of fruits in a single growing season, its fruits are a delicious culinary delight that bear a distinctive fragrance which varies throughout the tree’s life cycle. Fig fragrance captures the essence of the entire fig tree, from its fresh, hardy green leaves to the ripe, sweet violet fruit and even the earthy, woody notes of the tree’s bark.

Fig History

Fig trees could have been the first domesticated plant of the Neolithic Revolution, which dates to almost 12,000 years ago. This is a time period in which humans began cultivating plants, breeding animals for food, and forming permanent settlements, which was an incredibly important period of change. So it can be said that figs were among the first fruits to be cultivated by humans!

Fig fragrance’s rich history includes ancient Greeks and Romans, who revered the fig tree both for its fruit and aromatic leaves. They used fig leaves to create wreaths and garlands, infusing their festivities with a natural green scent.

Referenced in religious texts like the book of Genesis, the Ficus Carica trees provided the fig leaves worn by Adam and Eve after eating forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden.

What Does Fig Smell Like?

Fig fragrance is incredibly versatile, exuding fresh and green qualities and warm and woody notes simultaneously. On top of that, it has a fruity note that’s juicy sweet while remaining lush and sophisticated. Because of this, it’s an accessible fragrance tailored to different preferences, with a natural, inviting quality. The milky sweet or lactonic characteristic is reminiscent of coconut or milky butter. The emotional resonance of fig conjures warm, powerful connections of vivid images like biting into a fresh fig or meandering through Mediterranean hills.

Air Aroma’s Fig Essence Fragrance

Fruity, Woody, Green

Fig Sap, Coriander, Fig, Violet, Peach, Cyclamen, Fig Wood, Cedar Wood, Sandalwood

A forbidden romance meandering over rocky hills of the sea. Bells ringing in the distance and a stone overlook perched above fig trees. The buzz of hummingbirds moving through gardens to arrive at a dropped piece of fig fruit, severed open and perfuming the sky. Sultry juiciness tempts for a bite from a quail or a lover’s lips. A dark sweetness.

Fig Essence

Fig Essence is a luxurious aroma oil that elevates hotels, offices, homes, and retail spaces.

Fig fragrance is a timeless and enchanting choice for those who appreciate the natural beauty and complexity of the historic fruit. Explore the beauty of Fig in Air Aroma’s fig essence fragrance, or design a custom signature scent inspired by the many facets of Fig.

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Fragrant and beautifully luminous Lavender. Flaunting an evergreen foliage and purple blossoms – the colour of royalty and elegance. A member of the mint family, Lavender has a delicate floral aroma with underlying fresh, sweet, and herbal notes. Although native to areas surrounding the Mediterranean and countries east of India, the flower is now grown and adored universally, with France the epicentre of production and growing more than 80,000kg of Lavender each year.

The harvesting of Lavender usually happens between the months of June and August. Sprigs are picked just before they blossom as the aroma is most powerful then. There are several distillation methods used to extract the essential oil, however the most common method is ‘Steam Distillation’.

Steam distillation firstly requires drying for approximately two days to remove all water from the plant. Once done, the flowers and stems are carefully placed into a tank so that the water vapour cannot find a free path. This ensures the plant is totally saturated with the essential oil. The blend of water vapour and essence cools in a coil, where it becomes liquid again. Once the water and essence separates, the scented essential oil is extracted, completing the extraction process.

Health Benefits

Used in perfumery and aromatherapy for thousands of years, the Lavender essential oil is now known to be one of the most versatile and widely used oils. This is because Lavender has shown to provide several health benefits and healing properties for the mind, body, and soul. These benefits are a result of the different chemical compounds found in the plant that bring a positive effect to the human body. Two of these compounds contained in the plant includes Flavonoids and Linalool. Flavonoids provide anti-inflammatory and antioxidant actions while Linalool has shown to reduce anxiety, blood pressure and assist insomnia.

Lavender vs Lavandin

Lavender and Lavandin are both part of the Lavender family, however the fundamental difference between the two are the scent profiles and plant shape. The Lavandin flower displays a lilac colour with a narrow point at the end. Expressing a scent that is stronger and more pungent, the plant variation is more commonly used for its aromatic benefits. Lavender however exhibits a more compact and vibrant purple flowerhead. Voicing a scent that is more subtle, floral, and sweet, best used for its calming benefits. The differentiation of these scents is due to the amount of Camphor found in each, with Lavandin containing a much higher percentage, resulting in the stronger aroma.

Air Aroma Fragrances with Lavender

Air Aroma has a selection of wonderful fragrances available with Lavender notes – Cedar Mood, Pomelo Pulp, Serene, and Zuri. All special in their own way, releasing a beautiful scent. Contact us for guidance or to inquire about creating an exclusive signature scent.

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Absolutes are regarded as the purest and most aromatic form of fragrance from natural plant sources. These highly concentrated products are more fragrant than essential oils, and often portray the truest scent to the natural source. A number of different methods are used to extract fragrance that result in beautifully crafted essential oils, concretes and absolutes.

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A Nose is a term used to describe a perfume artist, someone who is capable of portraying moods, emotions and concepts through fragrance composition. A Nose is trained over many years to develop the knowledge of a large variety of fragrance ingredients and their smells, as well as understand how the ingredients change over time and how ingredients may be altered when combined with other ingredients.

One of France’s most remarkable perfumers, Edmond Roudnitska, described as the Mozart of perfumery, said… “To create new arrangements, new olfactory forms, it is enough that you think in odours, like a painter thinks in colours, and a musician in sounds.”
Roudnitska’s most notable achievement in perfumery, is the 1956 fragrance, Diorissimo, based on the delicate floral scent of Lily Of The Valley. As the scent of Lily Of The Valley cannot be extracted, unlike other flowers such as Rose or Jasmine, Roudnitska created and solved this problem by reconstructing the smell of the beautiful flower that is now commonly used throughout the perfume industry.

Air Aroma works closely with some of the world’s best perfumers to create bespoke fragrances that evoke emotions and represent our clients needs. The perfumers go through an in-depth process of blending high quality perfume mixtures to capture the desired requirements of all our clients no matter what that might be. When working with master Nose’s, the creative olfactory art of perfumery is limitless.

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In his keynotes talk, Chandler explained how new scent materials have a huge impact on the way “olfactory-works” (what we have known up to now as fragrances), are designed. Referring to synthetic materials only, he explains how these freed the designers from the limitations of nature allowing them to introduce new, impossible scent designs ranging from Abstract Expressionism to Surrealism and Photo-Realism. The talk and exhibition really serve to shift visitor’s perceptions of scent and shine a light onto the fascinating and under-acknowledged medium of design.

The exhibition runs from the 25th of September to the 30th of November 2014 at the National Gallery Victoria
For more information on the exhibition, visit the NGV website.

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With a collection of over 50 world famous gowns, the exhibition gives visitors a chance to view memorable gowns worn by the stars of yesteryear as well as modern celebrity brides, including Princess Marie Chantal of Greece and Jennifer Hawkins. World famous designers including, Valentino, Collette Dinnegan, Maticevski, Akira Isogawa, Mariana Hardwick and Alex Perry will be featured throughout the exhibition for guests to admire.

Step through the grand entrance of the Rippon Lea mansion to the sweet scent of Orange Blossom. The quintessentially bridal and floral fragrance, welcomes guests to the wedding celebrations awaiting within. The uplifting and dreamy blend of sweet orange and honey is reminiscent of the scent encountered while walking down the isle.

Follow the exhibition through the house to encounter the scenes of calamity in the dining room centred around Charles Dickens’ character Miss Havisham, the jilted bride. The space is featured as the wedding feast that never happened. Covered in dust and mould, the sweet fragrance of delicious treats combined with the bitter taste of decay.

Upstairs, the nervous groom is awaiting his future wife in the gentleman’s quarters. As he prepares himself, he jokes with his friends and adjusts his tie. They are drinking whiskey and smoking cigars; polishing their leather shoes and waxing their moustaches. The combination of leather and spice gently fills the room with masculine notes of anise, tarragon, clove, wood and patchouli.

Just across the hall, the anxious bride is preparing in the bathroom. Layers of delicate undergarments are laid out and with the help of her mother and bridesmaids the bride readies herself. The excitement is building and sweet notes of champagne, soap, hair pomade and perfume circles the room.

Close your eyes and step back in time with the complementary fragrances capturing each moment as it unfolds.

The Love, Desire and Riches exhibition runs from July 1- September 30 in Melbourne.

For more information and bookings visit the National Trust Website

To enhance your event through the use of scent, contact Air Aroma today

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