A key activity in the ROSEOVERDOSE Rose Retreat (detailed in Part 1 and Part 2) was a perfume-making workshop. This year’s guest perfumer was Sarah McCartney of 4160Tuesdays, which was a thrill for me because I had taken one of her full-day workshops at her original studio in London in 2019, and I was excited to get to meet her again. I wasn’t the only one!

I had thought that we would be learning to build rose accords by putting together various aromachemicals, but instead, we got to use the beautiful, locally produced Bulgarian rose essential oil (EO) and rose absolute along with other materials to create full perfumes. We did learn about the major components of rose oil and that the main compound in rose absolute is phenyl ethyl alcohol (PEA), which contributes most to the scent of rose water.

The workshop began with us smelling several perfumes that Sarah had composed featuring rose. As we sniffed from blotters, Sarah described the ingredients that were used and what each did for the perfume. Some were safer or biodegradable replacements for other materials historically used to create the same effect.

We then smelled some raw materials, which had been diluted in perfumer’s alcohol to a concentration suitable for use in blending later. I wrote down a few initial impressions of some that were notable or new to me.

Locally produced in Bulgaria:

• Rose EO 5%: Even at 5%, it smelled very rich and fruity. I later purchased some at 100% and can detect from it notes of artichoke, lemon, and tea in addition to the petally floralcy and spicy inflection characteristic of geranium
• Rose absolute 5%: More jammy than the essential oil, with a hint of glue (not a bad thing)
• Tobacco absolute 5% (nicotine free): Honeyed, leathery, and woody—I loved it and was determined to pair my rose with it for my project
• Helichrysum/immortelle/everlasting flower EO 5%: I had smelled this once, more than four years ago during my first ever natural perfumery workshop, and did not remember it well. The flower grows wild in Bulgaria. This time, the EO smelled bright, herbal, grassy, lemony, and a bit like sichuan peppercorn
• Lavender absolute 5%: Surprisingly coumarinic and dried down fruity. Rounder and warmer than lavender EO
• Melissa EO 2%: Also known as lemon balm, it smelled similar to litsea cubeba, like honey lemon tea. A little goes a very long way

Otherwise sourced materials:

• Ambrox Super 5%: This synthetic smelled cleaner, lighter, and less salty than Ambroxan to me at first, which was a relief because I struggle with Ambroxan. However, it dried down to smell like Ambroxan
• Ambrettolide HC: This version is a byproduct of sugar cane and therefore a natural material. Sweet and rosy, like strawberry candy… although it dried down to smell like regular Ambrettolide (a watery musk?)
• Clearwood 10%: A material created from white biotechnology (thus, natural) for a “cleaner” patchouli profile. Airy, powdery, and woody—I preferred this to patchouli EO, which smells much murkier. Dried down like smoky vetiver and patchouli
• Karmawood 10%: Sweet wood, and probably one of the synthetic ingredients I can’t stand in the ubiquitous, obnoxious woody-amber fragrances marketed to men. It is supposed to balance well with phenyl ethyl phenyl acetate, which imparts a honeyed rose aspect. However, it did not balance well with me, as I found it slightly nauseating even from the blotter. I was disappointed that it was not one of those categorized as having “trigeminal effects”
• Bicyclononalactone 10%: A synthetic coumarin alternative, it also smelled grassy (maybe like hay) and like coconut

Raw material sniffing was punctuated by smelling perfumes that Sarah had created specially for the Rose Retreat workshop, each in a different classic style of perfumery. This was very illustrative of how each material was used as either a central or supporting character in a finished perfume. I won’t reveal the names of these creations as they have not been released, but I will say that some are puns based on rose!

Now that we had become acquainted with some materials, Sarah introduced us to her method of sketching a scent structure like a solar system, with a central idea, note, or accord as the “sun,” balancing accords as “planets,” high-impact materials to be used in small proportions as “moons,” and boosting materials like Hedione and Iso E Super as “clouds.” (Musks, as well as some citruses such as bergamot, also serve as “clouds.”) She has explained this approach in this and other publicly available educational videos.

(A side note about Hedione—the sample used in this workshop smelled mildly lemony and plasticky to me. To some, it smells airy; to others, like jasmine; to yet others, nothing at all. I had a conversation with Sarah later about my strange experiences with Hedione in that it smelled different to me at different times and the dregs in my vial at home stank with sour pungency. She told me that this is known to happen when Hedione goes bad, such as in conditions where it hasn’t been stored properly.)

Sarah also shared her concept of combining the chypre and amber genres into a new one: the “chambre”! (Which is the French word for bedroom.) For what is perfumery without puns?! After all, the genres often overlap and share several core ingredients. She reminded us that formulas need not be lengthy—you can often recreate a note with few materials, or simply use the original natural material when budget is not a constraint.

We spent some time sketching or writing out our own ideas and smelling some additional materials at our own pace. Layering drops on blotters helped us get a sense of what proportion of each ingredient might be needed to balance each other in an accord. I find the solar system analogy not only intuitive but also ideasthetic and visually appealing—I think I admired my classmates’ pencil watercolors as much as their perfume blends!

The next day, we worked more on our formulas, and Sarah shared a couple of hers for us to study and use if we wanted. One of these happened to be a very juicy “chambre” that I liked very much.

We were each loaned a jewelry scale and let loose on the pre-diluted materials to start blending. It turned into a bit of a scavenger hunt for the more popular ones: “Has anyone seen the helichrysum?” “Do you have the Ambrettolide?”

This class was relatively advanced in the amount of knowledge shared and the number of materials we got to smell in a condensed time frame, but it accommodated a wide range of skill levels, from complete beginners to professional perfumers. A few participants were natural perfumers with established businesses, and they were able to work exclusively with the selection of natural materials provided.

Of course, anyone thinking of selling their perfumes must also consider the International Fragrance Association (IFRA) standards for safe use, which sets thresholds for the percentages of restricted compounds allowed in a fragrance. Many botanical ingredients contain high amounts of potential allergens, so the total amount of the same compound contributed by various plant-based and/or synthetic materials in a blend must be calculated. Sarah’s husband Nick gave a demonstration of software that could calculate the percentages of each restricted compound or molecule using inputs from the Safety Data Sheets of all materials used. The output would indicate all the documented allergens in the blend and whether any of them was over the IFRA limit.

My other half originally had an idea to capture his sensory experiences in Bulgaria so far—roses, white wine, cigarette smoke, gunpowder (a tribute to Kazanlak’s export), and unexpected sunshine—which I personally think makes for a brilliant creative brief (note to self). Given the limited time and the fact that it was his very first perfume-making attempt, he decided to follow Sarah’s formula for the luscious rose “chambre” and made his own pun with the name: Nyet Rose by Nyet Magritte.

…Get it?

I didn’t, until it was spelled out for me… “this is not a rose” by “not René Magritte” (the Belgian surrealist painter of This is Not a Pipe fame). A double bluff, because it contains lots of rose.

…Got it. I offered that nyet is Russian, and “no” in Bulgarian is ne, but he pointed out that the pun worked better phonetically with nyet.

As widely quoted, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet—and this one’s a beauty, featuring rose, helichrysum/immortelle, an amber accord, a chypre accord, and “clouds.”

Mine was actually not so different in principle, except that I wanted to include a large dose of tobacco absolute and balance the helichrysum with frankincense. I deliberated whether I wanted to include jasmine grandiflorum, because I wanted additional floralcy but not for it to overtake the rose. I finally decided to add a small amount.

My formula was developed more as ingredient clusters, but in retrospect, this is how it might look as a solar system:

• Sun: rose EO, rose absolute, tobacco absolute, raspberry ketone
• Planet 1: helichrysum EO
• Planet 2: lavender absolute
• Planet 3: frankincense EO, amyris EO (for some woodiness)
• Planet 4: labdanum absolute, Clearwood
• Moons: jasmine grandiflorum absolute, methyl ionone gamma (like violet candy), oakmoss absolute
• Clouds: bergamot EO, vanillin, Romandolide

Although the backbone was “chambre,” the relative proportions skewed the final blend toward chypre. I was careful to use very little vanillin to avoid too much sweetness. It has some of the juicy chypre characteristic that I love, and rosiness, but it’s slightly too powdery for my liking, so something needs to be adjusted.

In the workshop setting, I was so focused on materials that I had not thought of a name at all. At the end of the day, when we started sharing our creations by passing blotters around the room, one suddenly occurred to me: Adventurose.

A tribute to a wonderful adventure in the heart of the Rose Valley.