Blossomwoods - Agarwood Enfleurages - Set #2

$40.00

By Esprit de la Nature

A series of Neri-koh style incenses that capture the fragrant breath of flowers in precious woods combined with white ambergris or muskrat musk

Enfleurage: A process of extracting fragrance for incense or perfume, using resins, fats, or woods to absorb the exhalations of flowers.

Set #2 includes one each of : Lily, Night Blooming Tobacco Flower

and 2 of Millefleur

I’ve been enfleuraging flowers into resins, and other botanical materials, for nearly ten years. Never having had a formal class on enfleurage, teaching myself this process is always an exciting adventure. I have had some epic failures but also some beautiful results. In the past few years, I have experimented with creating fragrant bases for incense, into which I enfleurage flowers in order to add true-to-life fragrance notes.

I start enfleuraging during the cool days of spring using Narcissus, Lilac and Hyacinth flowers. Then move on to working under the cool, starry nights of summer with Lily, Night Blooming Tobacco, and Phlox flowers. During the summer, I bring glass jars, with a thin layer of the absorbing materials, into the garden, and carefully bend the stems of night blooming flowers into the jars. I call this method “Living Enfleurage”. By not removing the flowers from the plants, Living Enfleurage is the best way to capture the true-to-life scent of flowers. For as soon as a flower is picked, its fragrance starts to change in reaction to the stress.

Recently, a scent connoisseur and generous friend gifted me with a fine-quality, agarwood collection that they were not using. It took me some time, to begin to understand, the different types of agarwood and how to use this resonated wood in blended incense. I am still far from being an agarwood expert, a study that can take a lifetime, but I began to experiment. I decided to try to enfleurage night-blooming flowers into powdered agarwood. The results astounded me. Agarwood is, by far, the best material I have ever used to enfleurage. It holds the breath of the flowers and creates a complex incense that can last for hours. Fine Agarwood, in itself, is psychoactive and has so many facets, that the Blossomwoods blends are a true incense journey, where their stories unfold over a long time, and with repeated uses.

I recommend using Blossomwoods on an electric incense heater, starting low and going slow, raising the temperature from 120 degrees to 300 degrees over a period of hours or days.

The Agarwood I used

Kinam White AAA Agarwood from Yuzhi Oud

Scent Notes: Cinnamonic, cool, sweet

Irian Sinking Agarwood from Ensar Oud

Scent Notes: Vanilla infused into sandalwood over a jungle-green and earthy base

Lily Blossomwood Neri-koh wrapped in gold foil - This Lily enfleurage is, perhaps, my most successful enfleurage ever. A strong, Lily-flower scent. As the Neri-koh warms, and the agarwood starts to be present, the blend becomes even more delicious. Lilies are known for their intoxicating fragrance, combined with the natural psychoactive properties of agarwood, I find smelling Lily Blossomwood Neri-koh has a narcotic effect. I had to put the heater aside, after ten minutes, in order to enjoy the floating world.

Ingredients: Picked Lily flowers laid onto White Kinam AAA Agarwood, powdered fragrant lily petals, New Zealand A++++ Ambergris, bound with Organic Honey

Night Blooming Tobacco Blossomwood wrapped in silver foil - I came up with the idea of Living Enfleurage because of working with Night Blooming Tobacco (Nicotiana alata). Completely captivated by her fragrance, I found that the regular enfleurage method, of using picked flowers, resulted in a weak, rank, slightly-floral scent. The Night Blooming Tobacco’s flowers’ thin petals collapse soon after picking and their resinous calyx has a green tobacco smell. I have always had difficulty describing the unique fragrance of fresh Night Blooming Tobacco. While often called “Jasmine Tobacco”, its flowers do not smell, at all, like real Jasmine flowers. One of the most fascinating discoveries I made last summer is that the fragrance of Night Blooming Tobacco was extremely close to Irian agarwood with some additional balsamic, powdery, and rose notes. The aromas of Irian Agarwood and Night Blooming Tobacco are so close, that when I first sat with the Blossomwood enfleurage, I thought I had somehow lost the flower notes. Then I realized that the flower aroma and the agarwood had thoroughly blended together. The fresh scents of the Tobacco flowers float in and out, gently riding on a wave of Ambergris

Ingredients: Irian Sinking Agarwood, New Zealand White A+ floral type Ambergris bound with Organic Honey

Night Blooming Jasmine Blossomwood wrapped in green foil- Night Blooming Jasmine (Cestrum Nocturnum) are some of the smallest, yet most fragrant flowers, in the world. Scentless by day, at night, a single, tiny blossom can perfume a room, or a garden, with its powerful scent. Their aroma is an inebriating fragrance smelling of fresh cream, vanilla, and floral musk, which floats on a breeze of ether.

When sitting with the Night Blooming Jasmine, Blossomwood neri-koh, I found that the fresh smell of the Night Blooming Jasmine flowers floats over the darker agarwood aromas, but then slowly blends in beautifully, with the Agarwood’s green jungle aspects.

Ingredients: Irian sinking Agarwood, New Zealand A+ floral type Ambergris, Bound with Organic Honey

Millefleurs Blossomwood wrapped in purple foil – The base of Millefleurs Blossomwood nerikoh is the incense blend, that I originally made, in order to enfleurage Narcissus, Hyacinth and Lilac flowers, before I started to use Agarwood as an enfleurage base. I continued to enfleurage a variety of flowers into the base as spring turned into summer and then to autumn. On the heater, Millefleurs Blossomwood Neri-koh stays true to its name (millefleurs translates to a thousand flowers), as a variety of floral notes drift in and out of the scent-scape, much like sitting out in the garden on a summer day. Hints of green leaves and honey bees complete the aroma.

Ingredients: Mysore Sandalwood infused with Muskrat Musk, Propolis, Opoponax resin, Muskroot, Vetiver root, Storax Formosa resin

Photos of the process:

Millefleur enfleurage