World Tour of Raw Materials – Brazilian Tonka

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Brazilian Tonka

“I call it the delicious bean. It’s a perfume on its own. The tonka bean provides rounding, enveloping, softening accents of hay, tobacco, and sweet almond.
Its generous trace is enough to announce its presence.”

Patricia de Nicolaï

Olfactory notes:

The tonka bean is spell-binding. Delicious powdery, oriental, warm, sweet facets are revealed.

It’s all about balance: the enveloping sweetness blends with excessive inflexions reminiscent of almond and vanilla.

Far from being sickening, the tonka bean offers light, exquisite notes.

Origin:

Luxurious and mysterious, the cumaru tree grows in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
Under the exotic Brazilian canopy, this gigantic robust tree is said to ‘emerge’ because it surpasses all others in size.

Harvest:

The cumaru tree flowers in spring, and in summer it produces a fruit resembling a mango.

When the fruits are ripe they fall to the ground and are picked up by hand then dried for several months.

Extraction:

After the ripening period, the shell, which contains small seeds called tonka beans, is broken.

Then comes the stage of maceration in alcohol for a few hours. The beans develop delicate, white, shiny crystals.

They are then reduced to powder before being extracted with volatile solvents in order to obtain the concrete and finally the absolute.

Perfumes containing Brazilian Tonka:

Commitment:

The use of the tonka bean in perfumery represents an essential, lasting revenue for the local Amazonian communities that grow it. It is also a real defence against deforestation for intensive crops or for livestock production which are real dangers to the planet’s delicate forests.

Its non-aggressive and non-destructive harvesting provides protection for the entire surrounding ecosystem.

Perfumes containing Brazilian Tonka:

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