Pheromone-like essences

[AbdesSalaam Attar, Perfumer Composer]

Some vegetal aromatic raw materials mimic pheromone molecules of the animal kingdom.

This is well known for some of them as Sandalwood and Vanilla, but there are many others.

Most prominent in similitude to human body odors are Styrax, Cinnamon, Iris root and Ribes.

The case of Blackcurrant is very particular because it has definitely the smell of a human male sexual pheromone, but also much more.

Most people will agree when they smell Blackcurrant absolute that it smells like the urine of rat or of cat.

These animals in fact mark their territory with the pheromones evacuated with their urine, and the levels of pheromone become particularly high during the reproducing period for cats.

This is definitely a setback for the use of Blackcurrant in perfumery, or at least so would it seem. Although the absolute, extracted from the gems of Blackcurrant, possesses some definitely interesting deep fruity tones.

Instead, this similitude to animal pheromone makes Blackcurrant precious for building tridimensional fragrances without using animal scents.

If you want to know which scents are pheromone-like, have your cats smell the bottle, you will immediately understand it by the special interest they show.

Scritto Da – salaam Attar il 25 Novembre 2006alle ore 21:28:02

[Janita haan Morris]

I have had a few harvests of the blackcurrant bud and only one seemed to smell of cat pee…. the others from the same distributor at different time smelt very much like the blackcurrant bud…. yes I have just sniffed it now….. but it is the oil and wild…. very fruity….the distributor uses organic or wild with very long distillation no chemical and detergents to clean the specially designed steel apparatus for low temperature distillation.
So would harvests due to particular climate of that year alter pheromonal and odour intensities?

Janita haan Morris
composer natural perfume

[AbdesSalaam Attar, Perfumer Composer]

Blackcurrant is an absolute and does not exist as distilled for all I know.
You can send me samples as you did before and I would not be surprised if again (as last time) these materials would be just a bluff.

AbdesSalaam Attar
Compositore Profumiere

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