Amouage’s Essences line offers a trio of meditative scents inspired by the passing of time

Barrel ageing is a crucial step in creating the rich, nuanced flavor profiles in the world’s best wines and whiskeys. Now Amouage, the Omani fragrance house, has deployed the technique to add depth to a new trio of fragrances called the Essences, each designed to evoke the past, present, and future.

The scents, unveiled this fall at the company’s new headquarters in Muscat, were developed by a quartet of some of the fragrance world’s most accomplished perfumers. But they were also an experimentation that didn’t necessarily work—at first.

“Everyone was expecting that [ageing process] to work beautifully,” said the Amouage’s chief creative officer Renaud Salmon. But then the barrels started leaking. “Fragrances contain oil, and the viscosity of oil is much higher than alcohol. So the oil was going through the barrels, and everyone was panicked.”

The solution? Salmon and his colleagues decided to age the ethanol used for the fragrances in the barrels for six months, while the actual perfume oil itself was stored in metal tanks and infused with Australian sandalwood chips. “Sometimes what you could consider as a disaster can lead to a new configuration that can be even more exciting,” Salmon said.

Embarking on the process was also a leap of faith. Would this ageing process enhance or worsen the recipes? To ensure they were on the right path, they compared the un-aged versions to the finished results, and were pleased to find that the strategy enhanced the original scents. “Only in Oman can you find people who are actually patient enough and slow down enough to trust this process,” Salmon added.

Amouage Reasons

Conjured by Bertrand Duchaufour, a master of excavating detail from ancient materials, this woody, spicy scent uses hazelnut, davana, and palo santo has surprising gravitas.

Amouage Lustre

Julien Rasquinet and Paul Guerlain put some of the industry’s heaviest-hitting ingredients through a prism, injecting a sense of light and weightlessness with cardamom, orris, sandalwood, and vanilla. It’s a wearable reminder to stay in touch with the present.

Amouage Outlands

Indie rebel Cécile Zarokian designed this woody, ambery fragrance with an unexpected blend of citrus, patchouli, balsam, and resin. It’s supposed to make you think about the future, but the amber accord in the drydown gives it a sense of timelessness. with her own penchant for untethered creativity. In Amouage’s own words: “The edge of imagination. Uncharted mysteries. A dance with the unknown.”

While Outlands is the most masculine of the trip, Reasons is my own personal favourite. It’s the olfactory equivalent of a chill pill, and I find it so zen-inducing that just a few sprays can bring me to a less stressed frame of mind. And that’s part of what makes this scent—and the barrel-ageing it took to make it—worth the wait.

This story was first published on Robb Report USA. Featured photo by Amouage