Balmain Ambre Gris Perfume
Women's Fragrance

Balmain Ambre Gris perfume: a Pierre Balmain perfume launch in 2008: from a collection of brilliant women's perfumes. Exciting perfumes for women.

  
Aroma Notes: Pink Pepper, Cinnamon, Tuberose, Myrrh and Benzoin

Myrrh

Myrrh is the aromatic resin of a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus Commiphora, which is an essential oil termed an oleoresin. Myrrh resin is a natural gum. It has been used throughout history as a perfume, incense and medicine. It can also be ingested by mixing it with wine. When a tree wound penetrates through the bark and into the sapwood, the tree bleeds a resin which is used in Balmain Ambre Gris perfume.

Myrrh gum, like frankincense, is such a resin. When people harvest myrrh, they wound the trees repeatedly to bleed them of the gum. Myrrh gum is waxy, and coagulates quickly. After the harvest, the gum becomes hard and glossy. The gum is yellowish, and may be either clear or opaque. It darkens deeply as it ages, and white streaks emerge.

Modern myrrh has long been commented on as coming from a different source to that held in high regard by the ancients, having been superior in some way. Pedanius Dioscorides described the myrrh of the first century AD as most likely to refer to a "species of mimosa", describing it "like the Egyptian thorn". His description of its appearance and leaf structure as "pinnate-winged".

The ancient type of myrrh conjectured was noted for possessing a far more delightful odor than the modern. It was noted in 1837 that "The time, perhaps, is not far distant, when, through the spirit of research, the true myrrh-tree will be found".

Pink-Pepper

A pink peppercorn is a dried berry of the shrub Schinus molle, commonly known as the Peruvian pepper tree. Although a peppercorn is the dried fruit of a plant from the genus Piper, pink peppercorns came to be called such because they resemble peppercorns, and because they, too, have a peppery flavor. Dried berries from the related species Schinus terebinthifolius (the Brazilian pepper), are sometimes also called pink peppercorns (baies roses de Bourbon). The dried berries of that shrub are employed as culinary spice. In 1982, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States banned the import of Brazilian peppercorns from France into the US, asserting that people who eat the berries risk an array of acute symptoms, such as swollen eyelids and indigestion.

In response, the Government of France maintained that the berries are safe to eat if grown in prescribed conditions. The United States later lifted the ban and is today used in women's perfume.

Tuberose And Balmain Ambre Gris Perfume

Tuberose is related to the agave's, extracts of which are used as a middle note in perfumery. The common name derives from the Latin tuberosa, meaning swollen or tuberous in reference to its root system. Polianthes means "many flowers" in Greek. In Mexican Spanish the flower is called nardo or vara de San José, which means ‘St. Joseph’s staff’. The tuberose is a night-blooming plant thought to be native to Mexico along with every other species of Polianthes.

It grows in elongated spikes up to 45 cm (18 in) long that produce clusters of fragrant waxy white flowers that bloom from the bottom towards the top of the spike. It has long, bright green leaves clustered at the base of the plant and smaller, clasping leaves along the stem. Members of the closely related genus Manfreda are often called "tuberose's". In the Philippines, the plant is also known as azucena, and while once associated with funerals it is now used in floral arrangements and Balmain Ambre Gris perfume for women.

Cinnamon

Cinnamomum verum, called "true cinnamon", Ceylon cinnamon or Sri Lanka cinnamon is a small evergreen tree belonging to the family Lauraceae, native to Sri Lanka. Among other species, its inner bark is used to make cinnamon. The old botanical synonym for the tree—Cinnamomum zeylanicum—is derived from Sri Lanka's former name, Ceylon. Sri Lanka still produces 80–90% of the world's supply of Cinnamomum verum, and it is also cultivated on a commercial scale in Seychelles and Madagascar. Cinnamaldehyde is the organic compound that gives cinnamon its flavor and odor.

This pale yellow, viscous liquid occurs naturally in the bark of cinnamon trees and other species of the genus Cinnamomum. The essential oil of cinnamon bark is about 90% cinnamaldehyde. Cinnamyl alcohol is an organic compound that is found in esterified form in storax, balsam Peru and cinnamon leaves. It forms a white crystalline solid when pure, or a yellow oil when even slightly impure.

It can be produced by the hydrolysis of storax. Cinnamyl alcohol has a distinctive odor described as "sweet, balsam, hyacinth, spicy, green, powdery, cinnamic" and is used in Balmain Ambre Gris perfume/perfumes for women and perfumery.

Benzoin

Benzoin resin, a dried exudation from pierced bark, is currently produced from various Styrax species native to Sumatra, Java, and Thailand. Commonly traded are the resins of S. tonkinensis (Siam benzoin), S. benzoin (Sumatra benzoin), and S. benzoides. The name "benzoin" is probably derived from Arabic lubān jāwī ("Javan frankincense"); compare the obsolete terms "gum benjamin" and "benjoin".

This incidentally shows that the Arabs were aware of the origin of these resins, and that by the late Middle Ages at latest international trade in them was probably of major importance. The chemical benzoin (2-Hydroxy-2-phenylacetophenone), despite the apparent similarity of the name, is not contained in benzoin resin in measurable quantities. However, benzoin resin does contain small amounts of the hydrocarbon styrene, named however for Levant styrax (from Liquidambar orientalis),  from which it was first isolated, and not for the genus Styrax itself; industrially produced styrene is now used to produce polystyrene plastics, including Styrofoam TM. Since Antiquity, styrax resin has been used in Balmain Ambre Gris perfume/ perfumes, certain types of incense, and medicines. 

Styrax is a genus of about 130 species of large shrubs or small trees in the family Styracaceae, mostly native to warm temperate to tropical regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with the majority in eastern and southeastern Asia, but also crossing the equator in South America. Common names include styrax, or the more ambiguous storax, snowbell, and benzoin.