SANDALWOOD OIL
what is SANDALWOOD ?
Natural ingredient for perfumery overview
Bot: Santalum Album
Sandalwood is a class of woods from trees in the genus Santalum. The woods are heavy, yellow, and fine-grained, and, unlike many other aromatic kinds of wood, they retain their fragrance for decades. Sandalwood oil is extracted from the woods for use. Sandalwood is the second-most expensive wood in the world, after African blackwood.
Both the wood and the oil produce a distinctive fragrance that has been highly valued for centuries. Consequently, species of these slow-growing trees have suffered overharvesting in past centuries.
Olfactive description (sandalwood generic)
Woody, creamy, milky, sweet, and soft. Lactonic.
Specific character: woody - sandalwood
Where it grows:
India 🇮🇳
Australia 🇦🇺
Method of extraction
It is obtained by steam distillation of the wood reduced in powder, as the essential oil is located in the middle part of the tree.
Chemistry 🧪
The major components are: alpha santalol, beta santalol
Appearance
It is a colorless liquid.
Impact
Impacts in the base note.
Sandalwood Oil, Australasian.
Next to East Indian sandalwood oil, the west Australian oil is the most important of the various types of “true sandalwood oils” in perfumery. The oil is obtained by a combination of solvent extraction and steam distillation of the wood from a small west Australian wild-growing tree, Eucarya Spicata. Since the wood is also suitable for woodcarving and incense making, the better lumber is exported as such to India and other eastern countries where it is used as “sandalwood” equal to the East Indian sandalwood. The Australian tree is a close relative to the parent tree of East Indian sandalwood oil. The essential oil from Eucaria Spicata is produced in Western Australia only. The oil is occasionally rectified further in Australia prior to shipping.
Australasian Sandalwood Oil is a pale yellow viscous liquid whose odor is soft, woody, extremely tenacious, and somewhat balsamic in its delicate sweetness. Its top note is distinctly different from that of the East Indian sandalwood oil, not sweet but rather dry- bitter, slightly resinous like myrrh oil, although not very pronounced. On drying out, the odor slowly becomes very similar to that of the East Indian oil. Apart from this characteristic top note, there is very little difference in the overall odor between the East Indian oil and the Australasian oil. Redistilled Australasian sandalwood oil competes favorably with commercial grades of East Indian sandalwood oil.
Australasian Sandalwood Oil is used mainly as a replacement for East Indian sandalwood oil although the price difference is not very great. The Australasian oil is very suitable for the isolation of santalol, the main constituent. It should be kept in mind, however, that the conventionally given figure of 90/95 % “Santalol” in this oil refers to “total alcohols”, out of which perhaps 10% are not santalol. Fractionated distillation will eliminate the head fractions of hydrocarbons and other non-alcoholic components, while the main fraction will consist of “total alcohols”, generally named “Santalol” in perfumery and having the odor of East Indian “santalol”.
Australasian Sandalwood Oil is also used in perfumery for its balsamic-woody notes and great tenacity (fixative value). It blends well with linalool or Bois de rose oil, hydroxycitronellal, geraniol, citronellol, geranium oil, isoeugenol, vetiver oil, bergamot oil, oakmoss products, labdanum products, benzoin, ionones, methyl ionones, phenylethyl alcohol, etc. Its characteristic top-note often makes it unsuitable for direct replacement of the East Indian oil. Finally, the Australasian oil is still used in the Far East for pharmaceutical purposes, particularly as a disinfectant for the urinary tract, a use which has practically been abandoned in Europe and the U.S.A.
Australian Sandalwood Oil is rarely adulterated, but there are various qualities on the market. Years ago, the cutting of the oil was accomplished with essential oil, derived from a South Australian tree related to the Eucaria Spicata. The oil from the south Australian tree does not contain significant amounts of santalol.
An entirely different oil is obtained from the wood of a small southeastern Australian tree, Eremophila Mitchelli. Neither of the two oils is commercially produced or regularly available (see also monographs on Osyris Tenuifolia and Santalum Citrinum). The annual production of Australasian sandalwood oil fluctuates widely; it has been as high as 60 metric tons (in the early 1930s). It is presently between 3 and 15 metric tons. With respect to quantity, it presents no threat at all to the East Indian oil.
— Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin — S. Arctander (1961)
Sandalwood Oil, East Indian.
Sandalwood is one of the oldest known perfume materials, and it has at least 4000 years of history and uninterrupted use. It is believed that the oil of sandalwood was known in Ceylon over 1000 years ago, but it is only within the past century that the oil has appeared in European and American perfumery.
The oil is steam distilled or water distilled from the coarsely powdered wood of billets and roots of Santalum Album, a comparatively small tree. The tree originates in India, Ceylon, Indonesia, and surrounding islands, and it grows wild in the Portuguese island f Timor and on Celebes, among other places. Today, practically all Indian sandalwood oil is derived from the wood of cultivated trees, although cultures outside the native areas of the tree have never attained any importance. India exports some quantities of wood, but 80 to 90% of all the wood is distilled in India. Timor exports all its wood, and many of the smaller islands also have no distilleries at all. Sandalwood Oil, distilled in Europe or the USA., may derive from Indian wood (most often), from New Caledonian wood (certain French sandalwood oils), or it may be distilled from Timor wood (one Dutch producer seems to specialize in this oil). Of an estimated annual world production of over 100 metric tons, about 75 to 80 % is produced in India under government control (Mysore, etc.).
A sandalwood tree must be over 30 years old before its wood is suitable for distillation. Comminuting of the wood is not an easy job (3 progressive steps often required: sawing or cleaving, chopping, grinding), and the distillation also requires considerable experience, many hours of operation per batch, large amounts of steam or heating of the water, etc. For such reasons, it is understandable that the cultivation of the tree has remained an Indian tradition for thousands of years. Very recently, small lots of East African sandalwood oil (from Kenya) have reached the world market, but this product is still on an experimental scale.
East Indian Sandalwood Oil is a pale yellow to yellow, viscous liquid, having an extremely soft, sweet-woody, and almost animal-balsamic odor, presenting little or no particular top note, and remaining uniform for a considerable length of time due to its outstanding tenacity. The oil blends so excellently with rose, violet, tuberose, clove, lavender, bergamot, etc. etc., that it is almost a common “blender”-fixative in countless woody-floral and Oriental-floral bases, chypres, fougères, clover, carnation, origan- types and other perfume types. Furthermore, the oil is used as a base for co-distillation of other essential oils, e.g. the most delicate florals: rose, mimusops elengi, anthocephalus cadamba, pandanus, etc.. In India, the so-called “attars” are made with sandalwood oil distilled over such flowers, or by distillation of these flowers into a receiver with sandalwood oil.)
As a background note and sweet fixative in amber perfumes, in opopanax and “precious wood” types, it is almost obligatory, and it blends beautifully with the ionones, methyl ionones, oakmoss and labdanum products, patchouli oil, vetiver oil, natural and artificial musks, geranium oils, mimosa absolute, cassie, costus, clove bud oil or eugenol, linalool, geraniol, phenylethyl alcohol, hydroxycitronellal, bucinal, cyclamal, etc.
East Indian Sandalwood Oil is not infrequently adulterated with Australasian sandalwood oil (lowers the laevorotation), with araucaria oil, copaiba oil, heart fractions of aged Atlas cedarwood oil, Amyris oil, or various rare East African wood oils (e.g. the Brachyleana Hutchinsii, see Muhuhu Oil), with bleached copaiba balsam or with various odorless solvents such as benzyl alcohol, benzyl benzoate, diethyl phthalate, isopropyl myristate, liquid paraffin, etc. etc.
— Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin — S. Arctander (1961)
As a flavor material, sandalwood oil is of little or no importance. It has a slightly bitter, resinous taste, and requires skillful blending in order to become attractive. The oil is still used in certain types of the old-fashioned “Sen-Sen”, a sickly- sweet-tasting, “Oriental”- smelling licorice candy which is used for the masking of bad breath.
For pharmaceutical purposes, the oil is usually rectified in Europe and the U.S.A. Rectification includes steam distillation and drying of the oil. Although of some therapeutic value, the disinfectant use of sandalwood oil has been largely abandoned in most parts of the world.
Fulvio Ciccolo — 2020
Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin — S. Arctander (1961)
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