Patchouli Oil

A warm, deep, charismatic touch in perfumes..

An exact definition of a Mysterious beauty..

Patchouli Plant

Patchouli Oil is the love of many perfumers at first sight (first sniff ☺ ) and in top 5 in many more. 

For me? I can consider myself as a real fanatic of Patchouli Oil. I am quite lucky to be able to get this beautiful oil easily which allows me to do my own products with full of Patchouli such as perfumes, creams and lotions, repellent, home scent etc. 

For sure it has a very special place in many people in industry with its originally dark brown bright color and distinctive, rich, deep earthy odor.

So let’s take a look at the Patchouli Oil and try to understand it better..

PERFUMERY

Patchouli oil is a symbolic and essential ingredient of perfumery. 

In its deep world of aromas, you can stretch its sweet side and develop very fresh and sweet formulas or you can reveal its musky, earthy sides to create very masculine and deep combinations.. 

Hence It can be used in both man and women fragrances.

Plus its fixative and strong components provide deepness and long lasting to perfumes. 

It also used for some industrial fragrances too, to create special final products such as niche home scent, bar soaps, incense etc.  

  

Green Leaf..
The name Patchouli comes from Tamil language (spoken in India)
consist of Patchai; Green and Ellai; leaf 

Unfortunately I don’t have any real statistic shows the consumption of Patchouli oil specifically in fragrance industry or ratio in men & woman perfumes etc. 

Yet I can tell you that even medium-small size fragrance houses consume 300-500 kg of patchouli oil per year, medium-big ones consume up to 1 ton and multinationals consume tens of tons of Patchouli Oil.. They even distill their own Patchouli Oil in origin.

Another miracle of Nature. Like a real super star Patchouli knows that it leaves rich, velvet-like sensual behind..

INDUSTRY

The world consumption of Patchouli oil is 1200-1500 tons per year. And more than 80% of this demand comes from Indonesia.

Patchouli plant, botanical name Pogostemon Cablin, is native to tropical regions of Asia since it likes most humid climate, moist soil and heavy rain where water does NOT stand long time after. Thus, Indonesia is one of the best place to have a nice green field of Patchouli! 

In Indonesia you can find fields of patchouli in many islands but the biggest production place in Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi and Nias. 

You can see the quality differences due to islands.  

There are three types of Patchouli being cultivated in Indonesia; 

• Acehnese Patchouli - pogostemon cablin
• Javanese patchouli - pogostemon hortensis
• DanTin patchouli - pogostemon heyneaus

Acehnese patchouli (pogostemon cablin) is the most common type to cultivate due to highest content of oil at between 2,5 – 5,0 % while others only contain 0,5 % of essential oil.

In Indonesia Patchouli called NILAM 

Unlike many oils that could be substituted by synthetic materials, Patchouli Oil has very special components with a fresh, distinct and specific aroma with strong fixation force which cannot be substituted chemically!! 

Hence natural oil distilled from the cultivation remains the only source of this oil. Another saying is, you cannot copy it chemically, and you can only get this beauty from the Mother Nature ✌

Patchouli is a member of mint family! 

Pathouli Oil post will be continued with Production/Technic and some statistics soonest ! 

Cheers