To Tincture Orris Root

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Recently, several members expressed an interest on how to tincture Orris root.

A high-qualilty Orris tincture can be successfully substituted for Orris butter

(oil), one of the most expensive natural perfumery materials. I made two

different tinctures of Orris root a couple years ago with excellent results and

would like to share my experiences with you so that you can make them, too.

Preliminaries: The quality of your tincture will depend on the quality of the

raw materials you use. You need to obtain the best quality Orris root that you

can find. Orris root comes from one of either two closely related species of

Iris: Iris pallida or Iris germanica-florentina. Which species you use is not

as important as how fragrant the dried rhizomes are. They should have a strong,

violet flower-like scent. Orris root must be aged a minimum of three years to

allow the roots to develop their scent; Orris older than three years can be

even more fragrant as long as it has been stored properly (air-tight and out of

light.) It's very important to use peeled Orris root and not the unpeeled which

is called " natural " by many bulk wholesalers. Peeled is much more expensive,

but gives a much finer fragrance. Italian Orris root has been traditionally the

highest quality, but is now very difficult to find. I have used Orris from

Morocco which is of excellent quality and easier to obtain. Orris usually comes

in two forms: cut and sifted (little diced pieces) or powdered. Traditionally,

only the powdered form is used for tinturing, the idea being that the alcohol

can penetrate and extract more fragrance from powder than diced pieces. I have

never tried tincturing the cut-and-sifted pieces, but it is possible that it

could result in just as strong a tincture as the powdered. This may sound

counterintuitive, but some years ago I tinctured both whole and ground-up

Ambrette seeds purchased from Anya's Garden. The whole-seed tincture was just

as strong as the ground-up tincture. Using Orris pieces versus powder would

make an interesting experiment and if the odor strength were to be the same for

both, filtering pieces would be so much easier and less messy than filtering the

powder!

Tincturing Process: Arctander says (pages 43-44, Perfume and Flavoring

Materials of Natural Origin) that the classic perfume tincture for Orris root is

25% Orris root in 95% ethyl alcohol to be macerated for one month. I made the

classic 25% and also tried a 50% tincture:

Orris tincture 25%

100 grams ground Orris root

300 grams undenatured Alcohol 96%

Orris tinture 50%

200 grams ground Orris root

200 grams undenatured Alcohol 96%

Both tinctures were put in tightly sealed bottles and agitated (shaken) a

minimum of 5 times per day for one month. Shaking the tincture is critically

important in order to extract the most of the fragrance out of the Orris (the

more often you shake, the more fragrance will be extracted.) The 25% tincture

was fairly easy to shake because it was still liquid; However, the 50% tincture

was more difficult to shake (but still shakeable) because the Orris powder had

soaked up most of the alcohol. After one month of aging, both tinctures were

filtered and bottled. Filtering the ground Orris root, especially the 50%, is a

very messy and time-consuming process. Again, if using cut-and-sifted pieces

obtained the same odor strength and quality, filtering out the pieces would be

so much easier than the powder!

Results: To evaluate the fragrance of the two tinctures, I compared them to an

Orris butter 15% irones that I had purchased from Eden Botanicals. Irones are

what gives the violet-like fragrance: the higher the irones percentage the

stronger the violet fragrance (and 15% is a very high percentage.) The Orris

butter was in a 25% dilution and is a pale yellow in color. The 25% tincture

has a mild, violet odor, not as fine as the Orris butter, but an acceptable odor

profile and strength to be used as a substitute, in my opinion. It's color is a

pale, reddish-brown very similar to a Benzoin siam tincture 20%. It yielded

approximately 138g. of filtered tincture. The 50% tincture has probably twice

as strong a violet odor as the 25% tincture, again, not as fine a fragrance as

the butter, but a much cheaper substitute. It's color is a darker reddish-brown

similar to Benzoin siam tincture. It yielded approximately 66g. of filtered

tincture. Both tinctures have improved with age.

Conclusion: Making an Orris root tincture is worth the effort because it has a

similar (but less fine)odor profile (violet) as the Orris butter, but is

considerably lower in price. I hope this (long) post will help those interested

in making their own Orris tincture.

Mark

Renaissance Aromas