I recently discovered alcohol – as a perfume ingredient. Why did I never use it before?
Since I partially lived in Norway between 2020 and 2025, I basically don't drink alcohol anymore. I know it is toxic, and actually, the effect isn't that pleasant at all.
In perfume, I never liked its smell.
So when I started making perfume, I always used Jojoba oil – it has an almost perfectly neutral scent, good shelf life, and nourishes the skin.
But recently I discovered why alcohol is so ubiquitous in perfumery.
It started when I bought a copper still and was looking for local plants to forage and distill. I found out that Waldmeister was just about to bloom, which means that its aromatic concentration is the highest. I went to the forest, found and picked some and started drying it so that it would wilt and unfold its beautiful Coumarin aroma.
But then, in conversation with Claude, I realized that steam distillation of Waldmeister would not be as effective as tincturing it in Alcohol (which would not only preserve the aroma very well but also extract its green color).
So I thought about where to get pure and good quality alcohol. I thought about ordering it online but didn't want to wait, so I went to the next pharmacy and asked. And indeed they had 96° Alcohol, and actually with less odor than a comparable 96% Weingeist from an online shop (I compared it against another sample that I still had).
And so I made the Waldmeister tincture, and after a month it has become really strong and useful – so much so that I started using it instead of Tonka bean, which not only saves me plenty of money, but also gives my perfume a nice local connection.
I also made a tincture of a Thai Oolong tea that I like, and that one, after now one month, also smells amazing, just like the tea from the bottle.
Of course, initially on the skin, you smell the alcohol a bit, but it evaporates fast and leaves only the aromatic compounds stuck to the skin.
So: alcohol is a pretty strong solvent but also a pretty good carrier because it transfers the aromatics but then leaves pretty quickly. And it allows for spraying the perfume onto the wearers skin or even clothes on a larger area, drastically increasing projection compared to oil based perfume applied to the wrist.
Alcohol also does two other things: it dissolves sticky resinous materials, mixes volatile and less-volatile aromatics, and brightens top notes through faster evaporation.
With sticky, highly viscous resinous materials like Labdanum, this is a real blessing. Dissolving them in Jojoba oil to make them workable used to be a real challenge, and also only partially possible. Now, alcohol just gets the job done within minutes. Without any residue.
So the bottom line is: I am not replacing Jojoba oil as a carrier with alcohol, but in the past weeks I have learned to like alcohol as a carrier, and I will use it where I find it useful and where it is wanted.
Mostly if someone wants a sprayable perfume, we'll need alcohol. If someone wants something that nourishes the skin and stays close to the skin we need oil – either Jojoba oil or Coconut oil (fractionated of course, so it has no odor and is liquid).
And if someone wants the coconut scent, there's Coconut CO2 extract. It's delicious. But that's for another day.