A must-have in any perfumer’s arsenal, sandalwood forms the base note of countless fragrance compositions. Its milky, suave facets make for a deliciously blendable fixative that has inspired perfumers for millennia. It’s a woody and ambery note with a pervasive warmth that is both velvety-smooth and decadently creamy. Sandalwood’s mystical scent is found everywhere in perfumery. It’s luxurious, milky, tangy, and caramel-sweet aroma infuses a fragrance with deep, exotic accents. Sandalwood can also appear bright and bone-dry, and display its arid, woody side in a gorgeous and austere perfume. Sandalwood’s depth of tone and smooth, polished texture adds elegance, refinement, and mystery to any perfume - it can mimic vanilla’s deliciously sweet, butter-fat heaviness, or fade into cedar’s sharp and bitter feel. It’s also a fantastic and evocative scent on it’s own as well as in a blended fragrance. Sandalwood’s tastefully exotic lusciousness is wearable year-round by either sex, and you could spend a lifetime sampling all the different ways it can be used in perfumery.

Alluring, sensual, enticing… Musk is well-known for its aphrodisiac powers. Perfumers play with a myriad of synthetic musks to fix, blend and mold ingredients in a number of intoxicating accords. These notes are clean and transparent—lending a velvety, skinny effect. Musk notes in perfume used to be processed from the actual musk glands of animals to impart a gamey, warm, and sensual texture. But this practice is illegal in modern times, and nowadays musk notes in fragrance are entirely synthetic. Musk’s tangy aroma can range from sheer, metallic and bright to very animalic and even as intimate as the scent of warm, damp, human skin. Musk adds a sultry, sensual feel to demure feminine scents, as well as making masculine notes like tobacco and leather vividly expressive in cologne. For perfume fans who enjoy the alluring scent of warm, clean, skin - musk is a must-have note in fragrance.

Bergamot’s sheer, dry, citrusy feel is one of the most popular perfume notes, especially in mens’ cologne. It’s a Mediterranean fruit grown mainly in Calabria, Italy, and its aroma and taste is slightly between grapefruit and orange. Bergamot is a year-round pleasure to wear, and will blend well with any other note, making bergamot fragrances versatile and a sophisticated option for citrus fragrance fans.

An excellent link between heart notes and base notes, the woody, balsamic facets of guaiac wood add depth with an air of smoky, leathery intrigue. Less dry than cedarwood and harder than sandalwood, guaiac wood is sweet and stable with rose-like facets.