Most incense notes or resinous materials come from the dried sap “tears” of different trees. This is true of benzoin, opoponax, frankincense (even the pine resin we use in our Crimson Pine incense cones could be considered as such). 

One of the key materials of perfumery, Labdanum is another of these resins but instead of coming from tree resin, instead comes from a humble, scraggily shrub, the cistus shrub.  .A small, flowering, drought resistant bush found throughout the hilly and dry Mediterranean. Along with delightful little flowers the shrub exudes a sticky resin to help protect the plant from moisture loss, allowing it to flourish during hot & dry months. This resin is complex and intoxicating. Sweet, spicy, leathery, ambery, animalic with facets of dried fruits and smoke. 

One of the oldest perfume materials, labdanum has been noted in the text of the ancient Greeks. It was originally  harvested inadvertently by goat herders. Ancient herders would  have their animals graze on the hillsides and in brushing against these bushes would have resin coat the underside of the animals making a fragrant mess that would have to be pulled out.  This material was used in incense blends throughout the ancient world. 

As labdanum has remained an important aromatic material it’s method of harvest has evolved over the last few thousand years. People began then harvest this material without goats by mirroring the action of the animals, dragging sticks with long, leather or grass ropes hanging from them through the bushes. These ropes would collect a coating of labdanum resin to be processed. Now adays with production more formalized as a crop, the entire bush will be cut and soaked to allow the resin to float to the top of a tank and be collected. Though the harvesting methods have evolved, labdanum provides contemporary perfume a resin that connects it to humankind’s rich aromatic history. 

As noted, the scent of labdanum, like most resins is complex, Sweet and balsamic, spicy, deep and rich with leathery facets. There are a number of different extractions that perfume materials created to highlight different facets in this complex material.  Some leaning more leathery and animalic, some more typical sweet, vanillic amber and some are drier and less sweet to be used as a botanical suggestion of ambergris.

While the large perfume companies are creating wonderful new materials for perfumers to play with it is always interesting to look back at what has lasted, not just through the last hundred years of perfume but throughout humankind’s aromatic history.