Low Atranol Oakmoss
I just got my delivery of kilos from France with mimosa absolute, more labdanum, and a new low atranol oakmoss. Some kilos are hard to open, at least with my lousy wrists, so my kind Dad is in charge of opening evil kilo containers; I need to have him stop by to help with these.
Researchers have found that atranol and chloroatranol are the main allergens in oakmoss, so a method has been developed recently for removing them from natural oakmoss. The resulting product is not quite the same as regular moss, but it smells very good and is very close to regular moss. There’s absolutely no comparison between the low atranol moss and the awful synthetic substitutes for oakmoss; the synthetics are not even close to real moss. I’ll be switching from regular oakmoss to the low atranol version in all my formulas. This may cause very slight differences in scent when I make the change, but it will be so subtle I don’t think most people will even notice.
I hope that this will prove to be one solution to the oakmoss issue. It’d be great if IFRA would restate the restrictions in terms of allowed % atranol instead of allowed % oakmoss/treemoss. We’ll see how it all works out with time and further research. If you want to sample the new low atranol moss, Eden Botanicals carries it and sells samples.
I’m excited about the mimosa absolute too; it’s very pretty stuff and I’ve never had enough of it before to use in a scent for the website (just enough for personal projects).
I just finished 2008 sales tax forms and will get back to inventory. I’m about half way on that project; the shelves are looking much more organized!
I’m ready to send out a couple testers of Tabac Aurea and am still hoping to bring out Reves and Tabac before long.
Edited to add: I’ve been using regular oakmoss in all my formulas because I do not like the synthetic substitutes. I’ve been using low amounts of it (IFRA has not banned oakmoss, just restricted it to very low amounts). Many companies stopped using it completely though because of the allergen issue. This new low atranol version may help perfumers use oakmoss again if it becomes established as a viable alternative.
Oh now, there’s something I’d love to find out! It would be very interesting (to me, at least, LOL!) to see if I can tell the difference between scents with synthetic oakmoss and the low atranol oakmoss 🙂 The mimosa sounds lovely too and I look forward to seeing what you do with these!
Hi Gail! Ooops. I just realized my original wording wasn’t clear so I fixed it and added an update at the bottom. I’ve been using regular real oakmoss, not synthetic, because I just do not like the synthetics. So when I switch from real regular moss to real low atranol moss, no one should notice but me, I hope.
If you smelled real moss vs synth, you would have no trouble telling the difference. Anyone could tell the difference, but especially any perfume lover who is at all familiar with moss notes.
I’ve posted before that Givaudan oakmoss doesn’t smell right to me, though I love many of Givaudan’s other products. The only moss susbstitute I like is a product often called verymoss that is a pleasant earthy, powdery smell but smells nothing like real moss. It’s not a moss substitute to my way of thinking. The Givaudan has more the character of moss but is an unpleasant smell to me rather than the beautiful smell of real moss. The low atranol real moss still retains the beauty of real moss.
Yes mimosa is fun stuff! Can’t wait to work with it. 🙂