Bouquet Blanc Bouquet Blanc combines creamy gardenia with lush jasmine, tuberose, orange blossom, and ylang over a soft base of woods, vetiver, amber, orris, tonka, vanilla, and musk. The elegant base notes complement and extend the beautiful white florals without upstaging them.

Perfumer's Comments: I wanted this fragrance to feature creamy gardenia, jasmine, tuberose, orange blossom, and subtle woods. I didn't want an overly heady or vanillic floral, but instead a soft floral blend that keeps you sniffing the gentle scent that comes and goes as you move. I decided to use a base that features sandalwood and cedar with just a light touch of vetiver and musk, and I kept the basenotes soft enough to let the floral notes shine. I wanted a base that was interesting in its own right rather than a generic type of base often used with white floral blends.

Fragrance Notes: gardenia, tuberose absolute, jasmine, orange blossom, ylang, green leaves, amber, orris, sandalwood, cedar, vetiver, tonka, vanilla absolute.

jasmine sambac

Jasmine sambac and Jasmine grandiflorum are the two types of jasmine most often used in perfume. Jasmine sambac makes a great potted houseplant.

The traditional methods for producing absolutes and essential oils have not been successful in extracting the aroma of gardenia flowers, so the scent of gardenia has been approximated in commercial perfumes with combinations of other floral notes such as jasmine, orange blossom, and tuberose. Recently a small amount of gardenia absolute has become available through one source, but it is not commonly used because it is very limited in supply, quite costly, and not very long-lasting on the skin. It is beautiful though. People are working on other methods of extraction, so perhaps someday soon we will have more alternatives for natural gardenia notes.

gardenia in Sonoma Scent Studio's garden

tuberose

Tuberose, or Polianthes tuberosa, is not a rose at all -- it is a white flower that grows from a tuber and has an intense, heady fragrance.