What is Amber ?

“Amber” is often used in reference to one of three things: fossilized amber, ambergris, and a popular scent created from various resins and extracts.

Ambergris is a rare and precious substance produced in the digestive system of sperm whales. Over time, it transforms into a unique, warm scent that adds depth and complexity to amber perfumes. Ambergris is a rare hard mass that can found floating on the surface of marine waters or washed up on beaches. Because of its rarity, it is one of the most expensive materials that has been used in perfumery. Its odour is rich, sweet, velvety, salty, mineral, animalic, musky.

Amber isn’t a scent you can find naturally on its own—it’s crafted by perfume artists using a mix of ingredients to evoke the warmth and beauty of the ancient, fossilized tree sap we now call Amber. Expertly composed of resinous elements like Peru balsam, labdanum, benzoin, vanilla, and tonka bean. The scent of amber is sweet, resinous, cozy and warm, rich, powerful — it adds an unparalleled depth and fullness to fragrances.

These broadly now fit into 2 categories — Ambergris (Grey Amber) or Resins mixed with Perfume Ingredients (e.g. Vanilla, Tonka Beans, Labdanum, Benzoin, Tolu Balsam). These materials are used in perfumery to give us the perfumes generally categorised in the Oriental family, now more commonly known as the Amber Family.

It can happen that it is completely synthetic, molecules are used to create the scent of Amber. Molecules with more vibrant, almost aggressive scents, such as karanal, which is now found in many men's fragrances as a base note, or ambertketal, ambrocenid — the famous ambroxan and ambrox.