Bouquet Blanche Bouquet Blanche combines a creamy gardenia note with lush jasmine, tuberose, orange blossom, neroli, and ylang over a soft base of woods, light amber, 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 and true gardenia notes, 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 amber with just a light touch of musk so that the scent would still work for those who don't do well with musk, and I kept the basenotes soft enough to let the floral notes shine.

Fragrance Notes: gardenia, tuberose, jasmine, orange blossom, ylang, neroli, green leaves, amber, ambergris, sandalwood, cedar, vanilla.

jasmine grandiflorum

Jasmine grandiflorum has an intense sweet floral scent. It is not hardy in cold winters but can be grown in pots for gardeners who want to try it colder than zone 8. Jasmine sambac is the other type of jasmine commonly used in perfume and it 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.