Seaweed Absolute

Seaweed Absolute is a powerful perfume material and an important aspect of the 'marine' fragrance concept. Ours has an oceanic green-herbaceous, dry-woody/phenolic aroma with soft leather undertones and the true scent of exposed seaweed at the ocean’s shore. Delivering slightly salty marine notes, it is also used to add subtle hints of hay, smoke and walnut[1]. Natural perfumers may find Seaweed Absolute an excellent ingredient in the creation of a unique moss base, or for adding interest to green/fresh compositions.

Also known as bladderwrack, Fucus vesiculosus is a brown algae that attaches to rocks, but whose fronds are lined with buoyant air-bladders that maximize sunlight and grow to lengths that can exceed one meter. This marine plant contains iodine (from the Greek ioeides, or 'violet-colored', hence ionones in Violet Leaf Absolute) and is well equipped to thrive in cold ocean waters.[2] The raw material for our Seaweed Absolute is harvested all year long off the coast of Brittany in northwestern France. After harvesting, the seaweed is dried, ground into a powder and solvent extracted to produce a remarkable Seaweed Absolute with its characteristic iodized oceanic notes.[3]

Fucus vesiculosus, freshly washed up on a seashore, is true to what is meant by 'seaweed' in the context of odors and, "with due caution, to bury one’s nose in a mass of the stuff is to experience something of the boundless tracts far beyond the distant horizon."[4] And while most of humanity might wrinkle their noses at the scent of Seaweed, many Asian peoples who grew up with this marine plant on the menu find its aroma rather alluring.