Sandalwood in perfumery: everything you need to know

Sandalwood is not a single tree, but a genus, *Santalum*, which numbers some twenty species. The most famous, *Santalum album*, white sandalwood, is a small tropical tree four to nine metres tall, which can live for a century. It is also known as Mysore sandalwood or Indian sandalwood.

Its particularity is hidden underground: sandalwood is a hemiparasite. Its roots attach to those of neighbouring trees to draw part of their nourishment, without doing them much harm. It grows in dry forests, from India to Indonesia and as far as northern Australia. In India, where it has appeared in literature for more than two thousand years, its wood and oil are also used in religious rituals.

Only the heartwood, especially that of old trees, is rich in essence. The whole tree is therefore pulled up, stump and roots included, since they contain a great deal of it. The wood is then distilled, most often with steam. The resulting essence is made up mainly of santalols, the molecules specific to sandalwood. Unusually, the wood keeps its scent for decades.

A wood that has become rare. White sandalwood grows slowly: it takes at least fifteen years or so to obtain wood rich in essence. Long overexploited, it has become vulnerable in the wild. In India, its felling and trade are strictly regulated.

Other sandalwoods. Perfumery also uses Australian sandalwood, *Santalum spicatum*, grown in plantations in the west of the country, and New Caledonian sandalwood, *Santalum austrocaledonicum*. Synthetic molecules also reproduce its effect. Several houses in our catalogue specify the origin of theirs: Australian sandalwood at Matière Première, Le Labo and Goldfield & Banks, New Caledonian sandalwood at Tom Ford, Mysore sandalwood at Stéphane Humbert Lucas. Chanel, for its part, has made New Caledonian sandalwood the signature of its Bleu de Chanel line.

Sandalwood smells of soft wood. Its scent is warm, round and creamy, often described as milky, with nothing dry or sharp about it. It has neither the earthy greenness of vetiver, nor the pencil-shaving dryness of cedar, nor the intensity of oud: it is the gentlest of perfumery's great woods.

In a fragrance, it often serves as the base. It gives a warm, lasting foundation to ambers, woody fragrances, fougères and chypres, and extends florals and citrus. Placed in the foreground, it becomes the very subject of the composition. It appears in 80 fragrances in our catalogue.

It pairs particularly well with orris and violet, which make it powdery, with vanilla and tonka bean, which make it gourmand, and with spices, which warm it.

Three fragrances in which sandalwood accompanies citrus or flowers: it gives them softness and a warm base, without ever weighing them down.

Here, sandalwood no longer accompanies: it is the subject. Three woody fragrances that place it at the centre of the composition, each in a different light.

Sandalwood has a natural roundness that calls for gourmand notes. Two fragrances pair it with soft materials: one in high summer, the other in the dead of night.

To finish, two fragrances in which sandalwood loses a little of its softness: one beneath a sun-drenched fruit and resins, the other amid a forest of dry woods.

Start from the season. Aqua Vitae Cologne forte and Alone in Babylon are made for spring and summer; Bitter Peach for autumn and winter; the seven others span three seasons. Our reading of the seasons appears on each profile.

Choose its companion. With citrus and musks, sandalwood is luminous; with orris and violet, it turns powdery; with vanilla and coconut, it becomes gourmand; with leather, resins and spices, it darkens. The orris, vanilla and leather note pages list every fragrance in the catalogue that contains them.

Elsewhere in our catalogue. Sandalwood also slips into the base of chypres such as Frédéric Malle's Portrait of a Lady, of woody fragrances such as Argos' Danaë or Amouage's Decision 42, and Tom Ford cites sandalwood album in Ombré Leather Reserve. The full list, with the tier where it appears, is on the sandalwood note page.

To go further. Our guide Vetiver in perfumery tells the story of another great wood, Oud in perfumery that of a resinous wood of quite another intensity, and Love Bleu de Chanel? starts from a fragrance whose signature is sandalwood. For the colder months, see also The most beautiful woody fragrances for winter.