Scent Notes: Tea in Perfumery

Tea is best experienced with each of your senses: the whistle of a kettle or water pouring over a tea bag. A contemplative moment watching it steep. The feeling of a warm mug cupped in your hands. An earthy herbal or floral aroma rising with the steam, all contributing to that exquisite, symphonic first sip.

The physical sensation of drinking even the smallest cup of tea can transport you from a dreary day at your desk to a lavender field in Greece—and smell is intrinsic to that experience. It’s no wonder, then, that tea has become an increasingly popular element of modern perfumery, whether it’s a faithful recreation of a cup of Earl Grey, brimming with bergamot; a warm and spicy chai scent that lingers on your sweater; or a light-as-air green tea fragrance that cools your senses on a hot summer day. Tea can be revitalizing, refreshing, comforting, and calming, and a tea-based fragrance can connect you to that feeling in just a spritz or two.

“Scent is transportative,” says Rishi president Jeffrey Champeau. “It captures our focus and brings us places across the world or back into our memories.” What you smell influences how you taste and interpret the tea in your cup. “So much of what we perceive as ‘flavor’ is driven by the aromatic profile of a tea,” Champeau explains, adding that scent is the most “romantic” component of the tea-tasting experience. “Other aspects are also important, like mouthfeel and density, but it is the scents—the aromatic profile—of a tea that we tend to celebrate.” And the same sentiment applies to perfume!

A History of Tea Fragrances

Tea notes are more common in perfumery than you might think. While they may not be a foundational building block of fragrance like rose, jasmine, or amber, for example, they’re an essential element in a perfumer’s palette, especially because there are so many different varieties of tea. This gives perfumers seemingly endless options to work with—and gives tea lovers a new way to experience the many facets of their favorite brewable beverage.

One of the first major tea fragrances was legendary perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena’s Au Thé Vert, which he created for Bvlgari in 1992. Au Thé Vert, with its sparkling citrus and herbal green tea notes, perfectly aligned with the light, fresh, unisex scents that defined that decade, and more tea scents followed its lead—most notably Elizabeth Arden’s Green Tea, a perfume so beloved it has since spawned a fleet of flankers, or sister scents in the same fragrance family. Today, you’ll find “traditional” tea notes, notably black tea, in scents like Liis’s Ethereal Wave, a bright, crisp blend with a light-as-air finish. On the flip side, Jil Sander’s Black Tea is a spicy, smoky, and sultry interpretation. And just as matcha has become a mainstay at coffee shops around the globe, matcha fragrances are becoming more and more popular, with brands like Le Labo and Replica by Maison Margiela creating fragrances inspired by the tea ritual. Your love of tea doesn’t have to stop with your morning or evening cup; you can wear it on your skin all day.

But what does tea actually smell like? According to Joey Rozin, perfumer and founder of Hoax Parfum in New York City, tea notes are complex and compelling. For example, “the odor of a black tea is somewhere between jasmine and rose with ionones, or a class of materials that exist [in categories] of powdery, iris, woody, and fruity,” he explains. Tea notes can be the hero or heart of a fragrance or a supporting character; they can add depth and complexity to a perfume, make it sparkle or sing, or whisper gently as a cup of chamomile. Though the fragrance world is evolving past gendered scents, tea perfumes have always felt genderless—less bound to the “traditional” confines of f loral perfumes or fresh, aquatic colognes. Tea scents are also popular in the home fragrance category, particularly white tea aromas; they conjure up visions of clean, sunny rooms and soothing spa days.

The next time you brew a cup of tea, use it as a scent exercise—just like the pros do. Tea tasters use reference points like fruits, flowers, spices, and herbs when describing tea, like “an oolong tea with notes of freesia and orchid, a high-elevation Darjeeling tea with hints of magnolia and orange blossom, or a rich and smooth Yunnan black tea with notes of caramel, red date, and black pepper,” Champeau says. When evaluating teas, testers begin not with taste, but with smell; they smell the “hot aroma” of each tea in the lineup first, which reveals specific aspects of the scent profile, then go back to taste. Do the same with your favorite Rishi blends and take notes. What are you smelling? How does it make you feel? Does it remind you of a specific moment in time or a treasured memory? Don’t worry about smelling things perfectly; let your senses and creativity guide you. Scent is subjective, after all!