Guaiacwood

Guaiacwood is a wood so dense it sinks in water, and its oil is so rich that it turns solid at room temperature. Warm it in your hand and it melts into something soft, sweet and faintly smoky, like rose tea drunk beside a wood fire. It is in more of my chapters than any other material but one.

What guaiacwood is

Guaiacwood oil is steam distilled from the heartwood of Bulnesia sarmientoi, a slow growing tree of the dry forests of South America, one of the woods known as palo santo. The wood is so heavy and resinous that it sinks in water. The oil is a soft crystalline mass built on guaiol and bulnesol, with a sweet, dry, woody, powdery character and a smoky, rose tea nuance that makes it one of the most versatile base materials in perfumery. It bridges woods, resins and flowers with equal ease.

Where our guaiacwood comes from

Bulnesia sarmientoi grows in one region on earth: the Gran Chaco, the vast dry lowland forest that spreads across Paraguay, northern Argentina and southeastern Bolivia. The tree grows nowhere else, and the oil is distilled from wood harvested there. Our formula books record the species rather than a country, so the pin on our map marks the Chaco itself. The character of the wood, its density, its resin and the slow, dry warmth of its oil, is the character of that hard, sun struck forest.

How guaiacwood smells

Sweet, dry, woody, spicy, powdery and balsamic. There is a soft smoke like a distant fire, a faint rose and tea nuance, and a creamy, almost waxy warmth that lasts on the skin for a day.

Guaiacwood in our chapters

• IHayalThe Crown · in the base

  In Hayal it is the wood of the base, the soft smoke beneath the frankincense and labdanum of the crown.

• IIINéroli de NuitThe Blossom · in the base

  In Néroli de Nuit it is the warm wood beneath the blossoms, the branch the night flowers grow on.

• VChérie OudThe Trunk · in the base

  In Chérie Oud it is part of the trunk itself, the dense sweet wood beneath the vanilla.

• VIImpériale OudThe First Root · in the base

  In Impériale Oud it softens the oud, the powdery wood between the rose and the root.

• VIISultanat OudThe Deep Roots · in the base

  In Sultanat Oud it stands with the sandalwood beneath the oud, the creamy wood of the deep roots.

• VIIIRoyale OudThe Taproot · in the base

  In Royale Oud it is one of the woods of the taproot, the smoke between the cedars and the resins.

A note from the atelier

If oud is the soul of my darker chapters, guaiacwood is the body. It is the wood that makes the other woods feel warm.

Questions about guaiacwood