Ambergris

This grey, grainy, softly sweet and delightfully musky lump is ambergris, otherwise known as floating gold, or the ‘pearl of the whale’. This sample is one of a collection of raw perfume ingredients that was generously donated to us by Roja Dove, a master perfumer, fragrance historian and storyteller, whose intoxicating bespoke scents use only the finest ingredients.

Nowadays, ambergris is most well-known as a highly-prized perfume ingredient and one of the most expensive raw materials on earth, at around ten times the price of gold. It has been used by humans for centuries for uses as varied as a flavouring agent in food and drink, an aphrodisiac and a laxative, as well as in medicines for its fortifying and restorative effects. It was widely used during the Black Death when medieval doctors thought that burning it in the streets and carrying small balls of it under the nose would both prevent infection and ‘uplift the spirits’.

Ambergris is a pathological secretion from the sperm whale that is formed when the whale swallows cuttlefish, whose bony beaks and mandibles irritate its respiratory tract and intestine, causing the whale to secrete a waxy paste to surround the beaks and protect its stomach from further irritation. Master perfumer Roja Dove describes this process as like the ‘way that a pearl is formed inside an oyster’. When this waxy, bony waste reaches a certain size, the whale expels it. How exactly it ends up floating in the ocean is still debated: some think it is regurgitated through the whale’s mouth like a cat’s hairball, whilst others think it is expelled from the rectum.

Despite the mystery surrounding its precise origins, what is agreed upon is that ambergris only obtains its highly prized odour when exposed to air, salt and sun. As Roja notes in his book The Essence of Perfume, ‘ambergris found in the slaughterhouse has no value and is never used in perfumery’. Fresh ambergris is black, tarry and faecal in smell, but the longer it floats on the ocean’s surface and seasons, the lighter in colour it becomes, and the softer its scent, as faecal steroids are transformed into ambrein (the molecule that gives it its characteristic scent).

Because its aroma profile is so dependent on each sample’s specific composition and age, ambergris is renowned for being an incredibly complex smell with a plush, velvety texture. Fragrance chemist Gunther Ohloff once described ambergris as ‘humid, earthy, faecal, marine, algoid, tobacco-like, sandalwood-like, sweet, animal, musky and radiant’.

Roja describes its ‘soft, balsamic sensuality’ as ‘irreplaceable’ as its ‘sublimates all other materials within a composition’. In order to fully release the perfume, ambergris is ground to a powder and macerated in oil or tinctured in alcohol. Historically, ambergris has been used to perfume everything from candles to hair powders and gloves. Today it is reserved for the very finest perfume compositions because the cost is too prohibitive for most fragrances.