GREENS, HERBS AND FOUGERES / aromatic · honey · herbal
Immortelle
Category
GREENS, HERBS AND FOUGERES
Subcategory
aromatic · honey · herbal
Origin
Volatility
Heart Note
Botanical
Helichrysum italicum
Appearance
dark brownish green yellow semi-solid
Odor Strength
Medium
Producing Countries
Bosnia, Croatia, France (Corsica), Spain, Italy (Sardinia)
Pyramid
Heart
Burnt sugar, dried hay, curry powder left in the sun. Immortelle smells like caramelised tobacco on a warm stone wall — sweet but arid, honeyed but lean. Nothing else in perfumery occupies this register.
Dry, warm, caramelised. The first impressi on is a burnt-sugar sweetness — closer to maple syrup than honey, with a savoury undertone of curry leaf and dried hay. A tobacco-like smokiness sits underneath, less acrid than birch tar, less green than mate absolute. Compared to tonk a bean, immortelle is drier and more angular; compared to benzo in, it is less balsamic and more herbal. On blotter, the curry-spice quality from the italidiones is immediately apparent. On skin, the sweeter, almost liqueur-like quality strengthens over time as the lighter terpenic compounds evaporate.
Evolution over time
Immediately
Immediately
Dry, curry-like spice and burnt sugar. The italidiones announce themselves immediately — a warm, savoury sweetness unlike any other floral material. Faint green-herbal notes from alpha-pinene and limonene sit underneath.
After a few hours
After a few hours
The curry facet recedes. A deep, maple-syrup-like caramel emerges, accompanied by a tobacco-leaf smokiness. Hay and dried-grass undertones become more prominent. The overall effect is warm, golden, comforting — like sun-heated stone.
After a few days
After a few days
A persistent, dry, sweet-herbal trace. On fabric, a warm amber-hay residue lingers — less sweet than the heart phase, more mineral and transparent. The beta-diketones, being relatively heavy molecules, are the last to dissipate.
Terroir & Transformation
Indicative 2025 wholesale prices.
The Full Story
Immortelle — Croatian Helichrysum italicum — carries a maple-curry-fenugreek warmth into Première Peau's Simili Mirage, woven against sea salt and olibanum resinoid.
Immortelle (Helichrysum italicum) produces a particular essential oils in perfumery — a scent that sits outside conventional floral, woody, or aromatic categories. The dominant impressi on is a dry, caramelised sweetness: maple syrup scorched at the edges, tobacco leaves dried in salt air, curry spice without the heat. The chemical source of this character is a family of bet a-diketones called italidiones (I, II, and III), unique to this species, which constitute 12–30% of the essential oil depending on orig in. Neryl acetate, the quantitative maj or component at 15–40%, provides a softer, citrus-green backdrop.
The plant grows wild across Mediterranean garigue — Corsic a, Sardini a, the Dalmatian coast, the Balkan interior. Before the Yugoslav wars disrupted Balkan producti on in the 1990s, most commercial oil came from Bosni a and Herzegovin a. Corsi can oil then became the industry standard, known for higher italidione and neryl acetate content. Today, Bosni a, Croati a, Corsic a, and parts of Italy and Spain all produce commercial-grade oil. Terroir matters: Corsi can oils on granitic, acidic soils with sea-spray influence tend toward higher italidione percentages than Bosnian oils on limestone.
Steam distillation of the flowering tops yields 0.2–0.3% essential oil — roughly 1 to 1.5 kg per tonne of plant material. The absolute, obtained by solvent extraction, carries a different CAS number (977060-66-4 vs. 8023-95-8 for the essential oil) and a heavier, more resinous profile. CO2 extraction captures a broader aromatic spectrum, closer to the living plant.
In formulation, immortelle bridges warm-gourmand and dry-aromatic registers. It anchors tobacco accords, sweetens fougere bases without candied heaviness, and provides a sun-baked warmth to Mediterranean-style compositions. Its structural role is that of a modifier and fixative — it does not project loudly but alters the character of everything around it.
This note in Première Peau. Gravitas Capitale · Nuit Elastique · Simili Mirage. Sample all seven extraits in the Discovery Set.
Before the 1990s, the Balkans supplied most of the world's immortelle oil — primarily for flavouring pipe tobacco, not perfumery. The Yugoslav wars severed supply chains almost overnight, forcing the fragrance industry to pivot to Corsican production and permanently reshaping the market geography of this material.
Extraction & Chemistry
Extraction method: Steam distillation of fresh or partially dried flowering tops of Helichrysum italicum. Yield: 0.2–0.3% (approximately 1–1.5 kg of essential oil per tonne of plant material). Harvest timing is critical — peak italidione content occurs at full bloom. Distillation duration affects composition: shorter runs favour lighter monoterpenes; longer runs (3+ hours) extract more of the heavier beta-diketones.
Solvent extraction yields an absolute (CAS 977060-66-4), darker in colour and more resinous than the essential oil. Supercritical CO2 extraction is increasingly used for a fuller aromatic profile closer to the living flower, capturing heavier sesquiterpenes that steam distillation partially degrades.
Immortelle functions as a modifier, fixative, and structural bridge. Its italidione content provides a dry, caramelised sweetness that anchors tobacco, fougere, and amber accords without the cloying density of vanill a or the powderiness of coumar in. In chypre constructions, it contributes warmth to the oakmoss-bergamot axis. In Amber compositions, it provides a honeyed smokiness that reads as natural rather than confected. The essential oil blends structurally with hay absolute, labdanum, tobacco absolute, and coumar in-bearing materials. It also connects effectively to woody-amber synthetics — Ambroxan and Iso E Super both extend its warm, skin-like qualities. Correspondence with Premiere Peau: immortelle's warm, tobacco-adjacent, slightly leathered character connects with the Mediterranean warmth of SIMILI MIRAGE (/products/simili-mirage-leather-salty-maqu is-perfume), whose salt-and-maqu is identity shares geographic and olfactory territory with the plant itself.
