Sandalwood Mysore “Signature” Oil

Sandalwood Mysore “Signature” Oil, An Indepth Look:

Sandalwood is one of the oldest known perfume materials, and it has at least 4000 years of history and uninterrupted use. It is believed that the oil of sandalwood was known in Ceylon over 1000 years ago, but it is only within the past century that the oil has appeared in European and American perfumery.

East Indian Sandalwood Oil is a pale yellow to yellow, viscous liquid, having an extremely soft, sweet-woody, and almost animal-balsamic odor, presenting little or no particular top note, and remaining uniform for a considerable length of time due to its outstanding tenacity. The oil blends so excellently with rose, violet, tuberose, clove, lavender, bergamot, etc. etc., that it is almost a common “blender”-fixative in countless woody-floral and Oriental-floral bases, chypres, fougères, clover, carnation, origan- types and other perfume types. Furthermore, the oil is used as a base for co-distillation of other essential oils, e.g. the most delicate florals: rose, mimusops elengi, anthocephalus cadamba, pandanus, etc.. In India, the so-called “attars” are made with sandalwood oil distilled over such flowers, or by distillation of these flowers into a receiver with sandalwood oil.)

As a background note and sweet fixative in amber perfumes, in opopanax and “precious wood” types, it is almost obligatory, and it blends beautifully with the ionones, methyl ionones, oakmoss and labdanum products, patchouli oil, vetiver oil, natural and artificial musks, geranium oils, mimosa absolute, cassie, costus, clove bud oil or eugenol, linalool, geraniol, phenylethyl alcohol, hydroxycitronellal, bucinal, cyclamal, etc.

East Indian Sandalwood Oil is not infrequently adulterated with Australasian sandalwood oil (lowers the laevorotation), with araucaria oil, copaiba oil, heart fractions of aged Atlas cedarwood oil, Amyris oil, or various rare East African wood oils (e.g. the Brachyleana Hutchinsii, see Muhuhu Oil), with bleached copaiba balsam or with various odorless solvents such as benzyl alcohol, benzyl benzoate, diethyl phthalate, isopropyl myristate, liquid paraffin, etc. etc.

^{S. Arctander. Perfume and flavor Materials of Natural Origin, Carol Stream: Allured Publishing Corporation, 2008, pp. 574–576.}