What’s Your Spring Scent IQ?

What’s Your Spring Scent IQ?

We love sharing our passion for fragrances and perfumery. And as we enter a new season, we thought it would be fun to offer another special Scent Lodge scent quiz. Test your knowledge with these 12 questions.

Questions:

1. Maie de Rose flowers are handpicked in Grasse, France from May 1^st to the 30^th only. This variety of rose has a wonderfully rich, velvety aroma that perfumers love to work with. How many tons of rose petals does it take to produce one kilo of rose absolute?  Is it (a) 1 tonne, (b) 2 tonnes, (c) 3 tonnes, or (d) 5 tonnes
2. What country produces approximately 70% of the world’s rose essential oil?
3. How long does it take a perfumer to create a spring-themed fragrance from start-to-finish?
4. Name three spicy flowers you might find in a springtime fragrance?
5. What flower is celebrated every May 1^st throughout France?
6. You just bought a new fragrance for spring. Congratulations. It’s a 50 ml eau de parfum. How many sprays will you get from the bottle?
7. Lemon is one of the most popular notes in spring and summer scents. How do perfumers extract the fresh, bright aroma from the fruit?
8. Where is the best place to store your fragrance in late spring when the temperatures rise?
9. Green-themed fragrances bring a fresh, crisp character and are popular in spring. Perfumers will often add a green note to cut the sweetness of a particular composition and give it a contemporary feel. (We love how MCM Eau de Parfum has a green facet)  Name three ingredients that are used for their ‘green’ character in fragrances.
10. In the second Sex and the City movie, the four friends take a spring trip to Abu Dabi. What fragrance is Miranda seen holding in her hotel bathroom?
11. What is another name for “perfumer”?
12. In what century did Johann Maria Farina create the modern eau de cologne? Was it in (a) the 1500s, (b) the 1600s, (c) the 1700s or (d) the 1800s?

ANSWERS:

1. It takes 5 tonnes of rose petals to produce 1 kilo of rose absolute. You can understand why this makes rose one of the most expensive ingredients used in modern perfumery. Thankfully, it only takes less than 1% of rose oil in a fragrance to have an impact.

2. Bulgaria. Rose farms are a major industry for this European country that has the perfect climate and geography to grow both Damask and Centifolia rose varieties. The other countries with strong rose industries include Morocco, Turkey, India and Greece.

3. One year. A perfumer typically begins with a creative brief outlining the theme, target audience and budget for the composition. He or she will start experimenting with notes and ingredients and then produce prototypes that will go back and forth with the client. In some cases, a fragrance for a top luxury brand can take up to three years to complete depending on the complexity of the formula.

4. Lily, carnation and osmanthus flower are the most popular flowers that perfumers use to add a spicy facet or character to a fragrance.

5. Lily-of-the-valley. A sprig of this bloom, called Muguet in French, is traditionally presented to loved ones to bring good fortune for the year ahead. It’s called ‘La Fete du Muguet and dates back to 1561 when King Charles IX, having received a sprig himself, decided to return the gesture. He offered the flower to every lady in his court. Today, families all around France buy little bouquets of the flower on river bridges and give them to their loved ones. You’ll find some fragrance houses offer limited edition lily-of-the-valley scents on May 1^st only.

6. Approximately 500 sprays. You typically get 10 sprays for every 1 ml of scent in a bottle. So a 50 ml bottle will give you 500 sprays. A 100 ml bottle will provide 1,000 sprays.

7. This is really interesting. You might think that the juicy fruit in the centre of a lemon would offer the best scent, but it is actually the rind that contains the uplifting aroma we love in men’s and women’s fragrances. The rinds are cold-pressed which releases a rich oil that is processed and then blended into fragrances.

8. Most perfumers will recommend that you store your perfumes in a cool, dark place such as a closet or drawer. You want to avoid temperature swings so it isn’t a good idea to keep them in a bathroom, even in a drawer. If you visit major flavour and perfume houses in Europe, you’ll see that many keep fragrances in refrigerators. This keeps the formulas cool, at a constant temperature and away from any UV light. You can do the same thing at home. Your fragrances will last longer.

9. Perfumers have a number of ingredients they can draw from when they want to add a green character to a fragrance including: rhubarb, bitter orange leaves (petit grain), blackcurrant bud, hyacinth, galbanum, and even cut grass.

10. Bvlgari Eau Parfumee Eau Thé Vert (Green Tea). This light citrus-aromatic fragrance for her or him is ideal for warm climates. It features notes of lemon, green tea, mandarin orange, bergamot, Bulgarian rose, musk and cedar.

11. Nose. A professional perfumer is referred to as a ‘nose’ in the industry.

12. Eau de cologne, a lighter fragrance blend containing 2% to 4% essential oils in alcohol and water, was invented by Italian perfumer Johann Maria Farina in 1709 for the Royal courts of Europe. He lived and worked in the German City of Cologne, which is where the name came from.

Your Spring Scent IQ Rating

A big round of applause from the Scent Lodge team for completing this quiz. We snuck in some challenging questions in this quiz!

12 correct answers:

Congratulations, you are a true scent authority. Great work!

9 to 11 correct answers:

Excellent job, this is a very good score. We would consider you a very well-educated scent enthusiast.

6 to 8 correct answers:

Nice work. You clearly got a passing grade and have some good knowledge of perfumery

1 to 5 correct answers:

Good effort. There were some tricky questions in this quiz. We hope you learned some interesting facts.

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