Is it getting harder to make perfume, or am I getting more critical? I’m going to blame the fact that I have a very limited palette of aromachemicals. It seemed harder to create denial in a vial when I was working solely with essential oils.

This latest attempt at making perfume was a melange of only synthetics. It was borne out of a newfangled superpower: the possession of gamma-undecalactone, otherwise known as a “peachy” note. I wanted to create a “peaches and cream” concoction that wasn’t too sweet. It was the first time I experimented with methyl laitone and Methyl Diantilis®, making many mistakes along the way.

The first mistake was mixing them with a heavy dose of dihydro myrcenol (DHM), not knowing that this was typically overdosed in more “fresh” types of men’s fragrances. By itself, it had smelled like it would play well! Instead, I got a “rubber balloon” effect, and blamed each of several ingredients in turn, but it was impishly impossible to isolate the culprit. The methyls were also starting to smell stale on the blotters that I kept out. It was a conspiracy.

To make things worse, the gamma-undecalactone was offering itself up as a guilty party to the stale plasticky-ness of the mixture. Dejected, I replaced it with orange terpenes (perchance I could make an “orange creamsicle”), but that was no better.

On the musk front, Galaxolide® had seemed so promising as a complement to the milky methyls. However, eventually I realized they clashed somehow—albeit a creamy, silky dissonance—and the blend improved after I replaced it with Habanolide® and ethylene brassylate.

After rounds of iterative guesswork, I can say that I finally have the beginnings of a peachy rose perfume. It’s not enough to be a full perfume, but it could be a peachy-rosy-milky accord:

• Gamma-undecalactone
• Peonile®, Hedione®
• Rose accord (per Perfumer’s Apprentice demonstration formula: Peonile, dimethyl benzyl carbinyl acetate, geranyl acetate, citronellol, phenyl ethyl phenyl acetate, undecavertol, phenethyl acetate, and rose oxide)
• Iso E Super®, Habanolide, ethylene brassylate, methyl laitone

Fortunately, I don’t have to rely on this for much because I already have the perfect peachy rose: the limited-edition airport duty-free special, Rêve d’Escapade by Givenchy. That is bliss in a bottle.