One of the greatest labors of love for a natural perfumer is the constant care it takes to grow and tincture one's own botanicals for perfumery. Being blessed with both the educational background and tropical garden for such endeavors, Anya McCoy (President of the Natural Perfumer's Guild) as well as her well established internet perfume classes) has done just that with Ylang Tincture 2014.

Ylang Ylang from Anya's Garden

Tincturing as a process is covered beautifully In our Perfumers Workshop article here.  In short, the process Anya took was to infuse early morning or night picked  ylang ylang blossoms into organic sugar cane alcohol beginning in early summer 2014.  Each liter was recharged roughly 15 times. “It’s a labor of love – and obsession – to sort through the flowers, nestled deep in the canopy of the tree, sheltered from the sun, and pluck only the ripest ones.”

Ylang Ylang  flower Anya's Garden

“At first I marveled at the medium olive green color that developed with just one infusion of the flowers and each recharge got darker. I think it was black and opaque by the fifth or sixth charge,” Anya describes the increasing amount of aromatic wax and scent molecules. The tincture is kept at a specific amount of parts per millions for consistency from liter to liter.  Describing it's depth of color, an indication of the intensity of aroma within, Anya is correct in it's brooding darkness, and correct that held up to a light source, one cannot quite see through the tropical bloom within. Perhaps one of the the only commercially available ylang tincture on the American market, Ylang 2014 is both perfumer's tool and perfume. The tincture is certainly ready for use in any kind of alcohol based perfume endeavor, and its use as soliflore perfume is worth the complex brevity for any lover of ylang ylang fragrances.

Besides coming from a tree specific to Anya's Garden, the tincture takes what one usually encounters in a ylang essential oil or absolute and expands it almost holographically. Every component of ylang: it's sticky floral syrup diluted so spaciously one may experience the petal, the butter, the powder as if notes within a more complex perfume. A raw material enlarged, the muddy, gagging wall of flower found in a dark bottle of commercial ylang offerings is expanded and given authenticity; as in the air, we are identifying the volatile process of smelling through the oil, instead of merely the surface- which any perfumer will tell you is the magic of dilution (you will find dilution the first exercise in Anya's thorough Textbook.) Any perfumer will also tell you these dilutions are not meant to last on their own, they are the pieces of a puzzle which put together form the perfume- synergy at its apex.

Last year's news? It's probably next year's news technically; a tincture takes a year to mature in the organic alcohol is but a moment in the infancy of what this perfume material, meme parfum complet will mature into, not unlike wine. A savvy consumer might not think of opening such a vial until well into the 2020's.

–Einsof, Natural Perfume Editor

Ylang Ylang is a key ingredient in Ernest Beaux's 1921 Classic CHANEL NO 5. Illustration by Lucille Prache

Editor’s Note: Read Sr Contributor Elise Pearlstines’s Ylang Ylang in Perfumery here to learn more about the lore, legends, magick, use and beauty of ylang ylang flowers in perfumes.

From the bounty of Anya's Garden in Miami we have a draw for a 15mL bottle of tincture to wear or to use for your creations for  any registered reader in the world.You must be a registered reader or your comment is ineligble.  Please leave a comment with what you enjoyed or learned about Ylang tincture/perfume, and where you live. Do you have a favorite Ylang Ylang Perfume? Draw closes July 22, 2015

 We announce the winners on our site and on our Facebook page, so Like Cafleurebon and use our RSS option…or your dream prize will be just spilled perfume