Grand Soir

Fragrance Profile

Concentration: Eau de parfum

Olfactory Family: Woody Ambery

Top Notes: Cistus Labdanum from Spain

Heart Notes: Benzoin from Siam

Base Notes: Vanilla accord, Ambery accord

Manufacturer’s Description: Grand Soir Maison Francis Kurkdjian eau de parfum invites you to perfect your allure and don your most beautiful effects. Lose yourself in an endless night and enjoy the never ending brilliance of an evening in Paris when bridges and monuments glow as though lit with a thousand lights. Majestically displayed against a twilight sky carried by the warm vanilla of benzoin from Siam and tonka beans from Brazil rattled by the deep darkness of cistus resin from Spain. This ambery fragrance dresses the skin with vibrant notes as you lose yourself in the energetic pace and mystery of a meandering night in the City of Light.

Olfactory Notes

Tonka bean from Brazil and Venezuela: This precious raw ingredient comes from the Dipteryx odorata, a tree endemic to Central America and northern South America. Local people have to go into the jungle to pick its ripe fruit once fallen to the ground. After macerating in alcohol and dried, it delivers its kernel, a wrinkled black bean, the tonka. It gradually develops its flavors, including those of its main aromatic molecule, coumarin: powdery, almondy with a freshly mown hay effect, tobacco, slightly honeyed and smoked. Its gourmand facet evokes a slightly vanilla-scented and sweetened shortbread tart. Its absolute, obtained by volatile solvent extraction, is one of the most sensual base notes.

Vanilla Amber Accord: The amber used in perfumery has nothing to do with the yellow amber stone, which is ornamental but has no smell, nor with ambergris, which refers to an animal extract from the sperm whale. The amber accord inspired a series of successful perfumes launched at the beginning of the last century. It included two flagship ingredients, cistus labdanum, with its warm, resinous, animal facets, and vanillin, a new, sweet aromatic compound, which is the primary component of vanilla. Since then, the combination of these two warm and persistent notes has been considered to form the amber accord, generally enriched with tonka bean, coumarin and resins such as benzoin or incense, which are all base notes.

Benzoin from Siam: The resin of Styrax tonkinsesis, endemic to Southeast Asia, and more specifically Laos, is obtained by notching the trunk of its tree to make it “cry”. Once incised, the tears thus collected form a whitish liquid that turns amber-yellow as it solidifies. Six months later, classified according to its purity, this gum is harvested, cleaned and treated. The scent can be extracted by infusion in alcohol or by extraction with volatile solvents. The smell of benzoin is multi-faceted: sweet vanilla, with a gourmand caramel effect, honeyed, syrupy. Its enveloping properties are used as a base note, and perfume both Orthodox churches and Buddhist temples.

Ciste Labdanum: This wild shrub grows in arid soils around the Mediterranean. When it is hot, its leaves and branches exude a sticky animal-scented gum called labdanum, close to ambergris in high dilution. There are several ways of extracting Cistus Ladaniferus: steam distillation of its branches yields the aromatic, resinous and woody cistus oil. Extraction with volatile solvents results in the heavier cistus-labdanum absolute, at once balsamy, pyrogenic and resinous, used in the heart and base of a fragrance. These two products are pivotal notes in “chypre” accords and add character to amber accords and “oud” compositions in both women’s and men’s perfumes.