Patchouli is a natural ingredient used in perfumery and aromatherapy. Here are some details about patchouli, including its positive and negative aspects, ingredients, and materials:
Positive aspects:
- Patchouli oil has a sweet, spicy, smoky, and cedar-y scent that is powerful and rich.
- It blends well with other scents, including labdanum, vetiver, sandalwood, ionones, cedarwood derivatives, coumarin, oakmoss, geranium, clove oils, lavender, rose, bergamot, neroli, orris “resinoid”, nitro musks, cinnamates, methyl salicylate, cassia oil, myrrh, opopanax, sage clary absolute, borneol, pine needle oils, and cyclohexanone derivatives.
- Patchouli is often used as a base note in chypre, oriental, and powdery fragrances, and it blends particularly well with sweet floral tartness of bergamot, chilly sweetness of lavender, voluptuousness of rose, and smoothness of sandalwood.
- In aromatherapy, patchouli is often employed to treat stress and fatigue.
Negative aspects:
- The quality of patchouli oil can vary, and lower quality oils may have a musty or mossy scent.
Ingredients and materials:
- Patchouli oil is extracted through steam distillation from the dried leaves of the patchouli plant (Pogostemon cablin) .
- Patchouli oil is occasionally adulterated with cedarwood oil, clove oil sesquiterpenes, cedarwood derivatives, methyl abietate, hydroabietic alcohols, vetiver residues, camphor oil residues, and other materials.
- Certain types of patchouli extracts are processed further, such as by molecular distillation, to yield almost colorless, viscous oils of great olfactory value and outstandingly attractive odor type and diffusive power.
- Patchouli resinoid is a concrète extracted from the dried leaves by hydrocarbon solvents, such as benzene or petroleum ether.
- Patchouli is often used in incense sticks, which are made by blending natural resins, herbs, spices, and aromatic wood powders.
