


Folkwinds
Jasper No Kodo 2
The Story
Jasper no Kodō is made by co-extraction, distilling the materials together rather than blending them afterwards, so the result cannot be separated back into its parts. The charge includes blackberry, copal, palo santo and agarwood, aimed at the cold conifer air of the northern Rockies.


Woody
Dry grain of cut timber
The smell of cedar shavings, sandalwood, and dry vetiver roots, a sanded, resinous warmth with a faint pencil-box rasp. It feels grounded and composed, the quiet backbone that makes a scent read as serious and lasting.


Amber
Golden resin glowing warm
A soft, resinous glow built from labdanum, benzoin, and vanilla, sweet but dusky, like sun-warmed tree sap with a hint of incense smoke. It radiates a cozy, golden heat that wraps close to the skin and lingers.


Aromatic
Crushed herbs in cool air
The green, camphorous coolness of lavender, rosemary, sage, and thyme, like herbs bruised between the fingers. It feels clean, invigorating, and a touch austere, the crisp backbone of a classic barbershop freshness.


Fresh Spicy
Cool bite of cracked pepper
The crisp, tingling lift of pink pepper, cardamom, and ginger, peppery and almost effervescent rather than warm. It adds a bright, faceted sparkle and a clean prickle that feels modern, airy, and invigorating.


Sweet
Edible warmth on the skin
A rounded, sugary character that suggests caramel, honey, or spun candy without any single one dominating. It reads as comforting and indulgent, the gourmand pull that makes a fragrance feel soft, inviting, and almost good enough to taste.


Fruity
Ripe orchard flush of juice
The succulent sweetness of peach, pear, apple, or berry, soft and dewy with a nectar-like ripeness distinct from sharp citrus. It brings a playful, mouthwatering roundness that feels youthful, juicy, and lighthearted.
Blackberry
A dark berry that is always a construction
What it is
Blackberry yields no usable extract. Its aroma sits at trace concentrations in the fruit and is too water-soluble to survive extraction, so every blackberry note in perfumery is built rather than pressed. Mainstream houses assemble it from aroma-chemicals such as beta-ionone, furaneol and fruity esters, while all-natural houses reconstruct it from botanicals including heavily diluted blackcurrant bud absolute, davana and osmanthus.
How it smells
Dark and softly sweet, like crushed berries cooked down, with a violet-tinged powderiness underneath and a green edge on top. The lab-built version is brighter and more linear, holding one clear shape from spray to dry-down. A naturals-only reconstruction reads hazier and softer, less stable, drifting toward jam and green sap as it wears.
In perfumery
Blackberry lends fruity-florals, chypres and gourmands a dark juiciness that keeps sweetness from turning candied. It sits well beside rose, violet and mossy woods, where its powdery side bridges fruit and base. The synthetic route dominates commercial work because it doses easily and repeats; the botanical route remains rare and largely artisanal.
Good to know
No single molecule smells of blackberry, which is why the note is always a blend of several materials rather than one. The aroma-chemical version is stable and consistent across production runs. A botanical reconstruction varies with harvest and shifts over time, and neither approach can be read from an ingredient list alone.


Fir
A cold forest breathed in at first light
What it is
Fir scents come from true firs of the genus Abies, especially balsam fir (Abies balsamea) of eastern Canada and silver fir of Europe. Needles and young twigs are steam-distilled into a clear needle oil, or twigs are solvent-extracted into a thick, dark fir balsam absolute.
How it smells
The distilled oil is bright, green and resinous, sappy and almost fruity, with a clean coniferous coolness recalling crushed Christmas-tree needles. The absolute runs deeper and sweeter, jam-like and intensely balsamic, with a coumarin-tinged, slightly smoky warmth that lingers far longer.
In perfumery
A top-to-heart note in the distilled form and a tenacious base in the absolute, fir builds forest, fougere and aromatic-woody accords. It pairs with cedar, lavender, oakmoss and incense, and anchors dense coniferous compositions such as Slumberhouse Norne and many cool-weather woody fragrances.
Good to know
Fir balsam, the sticky oleoresin tapped from blisters on balsam fir bark, was historically prized as Canada balsam, a glass-clear cement for microscope slides and lenses thanks to its refractive index matching crown glass. The same forests supplied resin for both science and scent.


Copal
Bright citrus incense, smoky sacred resin
What it is
Copal is a fresh tree resin from Mexico and Central America, tapped mainly from Protium copal and Bursera species in the torchwood family Burseraceae. The hardened amber-to-white tears are gathered from the bark and burned, or solvent-extracted, to capture their volatile aromatic terpenes.
How it smells
Fresh and resinous, brighter and more lifted than frankincense, with a clear citrus-pine sparkle from limonene over a soft, sweet woodiness. White copal is bright and lemony; darker oro grades run warmer and gently smoky. Burned, it turns into clean, slightly piney sacred smoke that fades quickly.
In perfumery
A heart-to-base resinous note bringing luminous incense, citrus-conifer brightness and a ceremonial air. It pairs with frankincense, myrrh, palo santo and dry woods in meditative church-incense compositions. It lends transparency where heavier resins feel dense, evoking temple smoke and Mesoamerican ritual.
Good to know
Copal has perfumed Mesoamerican ritual for millennia; the Maya and Aztec burned it as a sacred offering, and it is still used in ceremonies today. The word comes from the Nahuatl copalli, meaning incense. Geologically, copal is resin on its way to becoming amber, not yet fully fossilized.


Palo Santo
Sacred wood smoke, sweet and resinous
What it is
An aromatic wood from Bursera graveolens, a tree of the dry tropical forests of Ecuador, Peru and Central America. Naturally fallen branches and deadwood are gathered and aged four to ten years, during which the heartwood concentrates fragrant terpenes; this seasoned wood is then steam-distilled into oil.
How it smells
Sweet, woody and resinous with a bright citrus lift of limonene and a soft smoky-incense undertone. It opens with lemony, almost minty freshness, then settles into warm sappy wood recalling a gentler frankincense crossed with sandalwood. The dry-down is dusty, balsamic and quietly smoky.
In perfumery
A heart-to-base material valued for marrying citrus brightness with woody warmth, bridging fresh top notes and resinous depth. It pairs naturally with frankincense, cedar, rose and labdanum in woody and incense compositions, lending a meditative, smoky-sweet signature to niche and natural perfumes.
Good to know
Living palo santo wood gives little of the prized aroma; it develops only after the tree dies and seasons for years, as the heartwood resin matures and concentrates. Fearing overharvesting, Peru's forestry authority permits only naturally fallen or dead wood, and synthetics increasingly substitute for the natural oil.


Juniper Berries
Resinous blue berries that breathe gin and pine forest
What it is
The seed cones of Juniperus communis, an evergreen conifer of northern-hemisphere heaths and mountains. The fleshy blue-black berry-like cones ripen over two to three years. Dried, then steam-distilled, they yield a pale essential oil, the same berry that flavors gin.
How it smells
Crisp, dry and resinous: green pine needles, fresh-cracked pepper and a cool turpentine bite over balsamic warmth. The opening reads gin-like and aromatic, almost minty, then settles into woody, slightly camphorous resin with a faint sweet, sappy undertone.
In perfumery
A top-to-heart note prized in fougeres, chypres and aromatic colognes for crisp, herbal lift. It pairs with lavender, vetiver, cardamom and citrus. Juniper berry threads through the tops of countless gin-toned, aromatic-woody compositions.
Good to know
Juniper has perfumed ritual for millennia; branches were burned as fumigant in plague-era hospitals and sickrooms. The plant is dioecious, so only female bushes bear the aromatic cones, and slow multi-year ripening leaves green and ripe berries sharing one branch.


Hemlock
Crushed evergreen needles, green and softly resinous
What it is
In perfumery hemlock means the conifer genus Tsuga, especially Eastern hemlock Tsuga canadensis, not the poisonous herb Conium that killed Socrates. The essential oil is steam-distilled from the needles and young twigs of these slow-growing evergreen trees, mostly harvested in eastern North American forests.
How it smells
Full-bodied and green, blending pine, fir and spruce into one rounded conifer scent. It carries a soft fruity nuance often likened to apple, over a mossy, mildly sweet undertone. Gentler and less sharp than many needle oils, it stays fresh, forest-like and balsamic.
In perfumery
A middle-to-base note bringing crisp coniferous freshness and a green forest impression. It blends with cedar, pine, fir balsam, vetiver and citrus, lending realism to woodland and winter compositions. It supports fougere and chypre structures wanting an evergreen, outdoor, open-air character.
Good to know
The name is a botanical accident: early colonists thought crushed Tsuga needles smelled faintly of poison hemlock and the misnomer stuck, though the plants are unrelated and the conifer is harmless. Tsuga oil is unusually rich in bornyl acetate, sometimes a third or more of the oil.
Boronia
The Australian flower that smells of violets and hay
What it is
Boronia megastigma, known as brown boronia, is a small shrub of the citrus family native to the far southwest of Western Australia. Its nodding, cup-shaped flowers are brown-purple outside and yellow within. Most perfumery material now comes from cultivated plantations in Tasmania, where the flowers are solvent-extracted to a waxy concrete and then to an absolute.
How it smells
Green and cassis-like on opening, with the dry sweetness of cut hay. The heart is powdery and violet-like, closer to orris and black tea than to any garden flower, with apricot and dried raspberry at the edges. It settles woody and soft. At full strength it is overwhelming, and only legible heavily diluted.
In perfumery
Boronia is used in traces, a heart material that bridges floral, fruity and woody accords and lifts the flowers around it. Its dominant odour constituent is beta-ionone, and boronia is one of the few flowers whose extract carries ionones naturally, which is why it reads as violet and orris with neither present. It gives depth more than a declared note.
Good to know
Boronia absolute is among the costliest floral materials in perfumery. The flowers open for only a few weeks in the southern spring, the yield from them is very small, and world production is correspondingly tiny. Synthetic ionones reproduce part of the effect, but not the green cassis and hay that sit around it.


Natural Oud
Real distilled agarwood, alive and animalic
What it is
Oil distilled from genuine agarwood: the dark resin a wild or cultivated Aquilaria tree forms to defend itself against mould and injury. The infected heartwood is ground, soaked, fermented and slowly distilled, then often aged for years. A single oil can carry well over a hundred volatile compounds.
How it smells
A shifting, living scent rather than a fixed note: resinous and smoky, swinging between barnyard and incense, leather, dried fruit, honey, earth and warm skin. It often opens raw and animalic, then settles into something meditative and golden, rarely the same twice across an evening.
In perfumery
Real distilled oud is rare in Western commercial scent because good oil is sold by the gram, quality swings wildly, and Aquilaria sits under CITES protection. It is sold as dehn al oud across the Gulf and distilled in small batches by artisan houses, while most mainstream perfume reaches for an accord instead.
Good to know
Origin and distillation decide everything: species, soil, fermentation time and the still itself. Quality also rises with age, as harsh fermented top notes mellow into smoother resin. The barnyard funk that startles newcomers is the signature of the genuine article, not a flaw to be scrubbed away.


Lotus
Cool sacred water-flower, clean and dewy
What it is
Lotus refers to two aquatic flowers, the sacred pink Nelumbo nucifera of Asia and the blue Nymphaea caerulea of the Nile, both rooted in pond mud with blooms held above the water. The petals are highly volatile and yield very little oil, so most lotus notes are reconstructed accords.
How it smells
The natural flower is delicate, cool and watery, with a clean rosy-green sweetness in the pink lotus and a deeper, narcotic, faintly wine-like character in the blue. Reconstructions read fresh and dewy: petals over still water, a cucumber-melon coolness and a soft, airy floral lift.
In perfumery
Lotus serves as a fresh floral heart, adding transparency, dewiness and a serene aquatic glow that balances heavier white florals and woods. Accords blend ozonic marine molecules, clean petal materials and green-cucumber notes. Many spa-style aquatics build around its cool water-lily effect.
Good to know
The blue lotus of ancient Egypt was steeped in wine at banquets for its mildly sedative effect, and it recurs across tomb paintings as a symbol of rebirth, since the flower closes and sinks at dusk then reopens with the sun each morning.


Narcissus
Hay, honey and a green animal hush
What it is
An absolute extracted from the flowers of Narcissus poeticus, a daffodil-family bulb. For perfumery it is hand-harvested from high meadows on the Aubrac plateau in France's Massif Central, over the few weeks of the late-spring bloom. Blooms are solvent-extracted into a concrete, then alcohol-washed to a thick dark absolute.
How it smells
Green and floral over a heady, narcotic depth: bruised petals, fresh hay and tobacco, with honeyed, faintly fecal facets from indole. It opens grassy and herbal, then dries into something earthy, leathery and mossy, far darker and stranger than the bright daffodil might suggest.
In perfumery
A heart note adding green narcotic richness and a hay-like, mossy depth that deepens chypres and florals. It pairs with jasmine, oakmoss, leather and immortelle. Its black, animalic facet anchors several dark vintage florals and threads through classic leathery chypres.
Good to know
Narcissus absolute is among the costliest florals: flowers are hand-mown with a comb during a few spring weeks and yield very little oil. The name likely comes not from the drowning Greek youth but from Greek narke, numbness, for the flower's narcotic, head-spinning scent.


Gardenia
Creamy white bloom with a mushroom heart
What it is
Gardenia is a glossy-leaved evergreen shrub of the coffee family, native to China and Japan, prized for its waxy white flowers. The living bloom yields almost no oil to extraction, so perfumers recreate it through headspace analysis and reconstruction from jasmine, tuberose and aroma-chemicals.
How it smells
Lush, creamy and white-floral, layering jasmine sweetness over tuberose richness. A green, almost buttery freshness opens it, while a curious mushroom-and-coconut facet sits at its core, lending a fleshy, slightly savory depth that keeps the sweetness grounded and lifelike.
In perfumery
A heart note bringing opulent, velvety body to white-floral and tropical compositions. It pairs with tuberose, ylang-ylang, jasmine and coconut, and stars in soliflores built entirely around the bloom.
Good to know
A true gardenia absolute barely exists commercially: the flower yields too little material to extract economically, so nearly every gardenia note is a clever reconstruction. The shrub was named for Scottish-born naturalist Alexander Garden in the eighteenth century.


Ambergris
Sea-aged whale gold breathing warm salt air
What it is
Ambergris is a waxy substance formed in the gut of the sperm whale, thought to coat the indigestible squid beaks it swallows. Produced by perhaps one percent of whales, it is expelled and drifts for years at sea, oxidizing under sun and salt before washing ashore as lumps.
How it smells
Fresh ambergris is fecal and marine; aged, it turns sweet, animalic and softly mineral. The scent is warm and skin-like, with tobacco, dry seaweed, old wood and a salty, faintly sweet musk. It reads less as a sharp odor than as warmth, diffusion and breath.
In perfumery
A prized base note and fixative, it lends warmth, diffusion and a luminous skin effect while slowing evaporation of lighter materials. Its bulk constituent is the near-odorless triterpene ambrein, whose oxidation products ambroxide and ambrinol carry the scent. Most fragrances now use synthetics like Ambroxan; rare real tinctures appear in bespoke work and vintage chypre and oriental compositions.
Good to know
Though salvageable in some countries, ambergris is illegal to collect, possess or sell in the United States, protected as a sperm-whale product under marine-mammal and endangered-species law; India bans possession and sale as well, while Australia restricts only its commercial import and export. Single boulder-sized finds have sold elsewhere for hundreds of thousands of dollars, earning the nickname floating gold.


Oakmoss
The damp green soul of the forest floor
What it is
Oakmoss is not a true moss but a lichen, Evernia prunastri, growing on oak and other deciduous bark across temperate Europe and North Africa, notably the Balkans, France and Morocco. The harvested thalli are solvent-extracted into a dark, viscous concrete and absolute, the raw materials used in perfumery.
How it smells
Deeply earthy and forest-green, with damp bark, wet stone and a leathery, inky undertone. A dry, faintly bitter mossiness carries marine and tar-like facets. The effect is shadowy rather than fresh, evoking the cool floor beneath old trees after rain has soaked the ground.
In perfumery
A base note and the backbone of the chypre family, lending structure, depth and a vintage signature. It pairs classically with bergamot, labdanum and patchouli. It defines the great peach-spiced chypres and the green core of classic galbanum florals, plus countless mossy fougères and masculines.
Good to know
Oakmoss extracts contain atranol and chloroatranol, potent skin allergens the EU prohibited outright in cosmetics in 2017 (Regulation 2017/1410, applying from August 2019). IFRA separately requires low-atranol grades, each molecule below 100 ppm in the extract, and caps the extract itself at 0.1% in fine fragrance; that older ceiling, not the atranol measures, is what quietly reshaped how the classic chypre smells.


Pine Needle Absolute
Resinous forest air, sharp and bracing
What it is
Pine in perfumery usually means the essential oil steam-distilled from the needles and young twigs of conifers in the Pinus genus, most often Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris, grown across Siberia, Scandinavia and the Balkans. The oil is rich in monoterpenes such as alpha-pinene drawn straight from the foliage.
How it smells
Fresh, dry and resinous with a green, balsamic coolness and a faint camphor-turpentine bite. The opening is bracing and outdoorsy, like cold forest air, sappy and slightly medicinal. As it fades it grows softer and sweeter, leaving a clean coniferous warmth rather than the initial sharpness.
In perfumery
A top note that delivers instant evergreen freshness and a rugged, open-air character. It anchors woody-forest accords, masculine fougeres and clean functional scents, pairing with lavender, cedar, fir and fresh musks. Its crisp coniferous lift defines the brisk alpine spirit of Pino Silvestre.
Good to know
The bracing scent of pine became shorthand for cleanliness in the twentieth century, when pine oil's natural disinfectant power made it the smell of scrubbed floors and household cleaners. That association still tugs at the nose, lending pine a paradoxical mix of wild forest and tidy hygiene.
Jade Wood
A dry Australian cypress that anchors the base
What it is
Jade Wood is a trade name rather than a botanical one. The material sold under it is an essential oil steam distilled from the wood of Callitris glaucophylla, the white cypress pine, a conifer that grows across inland Australia. No tree carries the name jade wood in botanical literature.
How it smells
Dry and woody, with a lactonic softness that reads closer to warm milk than to sap. Balsamic and faintly resinous beneath, with little sweetness. Suppliers place it near blue cypress, with quieter echoes of sandalwood and massoia bark. Some houses describe a cooler impression instead: crisp and light rather than dark.
In perfumery
It belongs in the base and works as a fixative, holding a composition together rather than announcing itself. Perfumers reach for it in incense and smoke accords, and beside agarwood and sandalwood, where it extends the woods without crowding them. It also serves as a more affordable stand-in for blue cypress.
Good to know
The tree is better known as a timber than as a perfume material. Its heartwood resists termites, an effect researchers have traced to sesquiterpene compounds in the wood, and it is milled for flooring, fencing and joinery across Australia. The name has no connection to the jade plant, a separate note.


Green Sacra Absolute
Sacred smoke distilled from desert tree tears
What it is
Frankincense, or olibanum, is the dried gum resin of Boswellia trees, with Boswellia sacra of Oman, Yemen and Somalia among the most prized. The bark is scored and weeps a milky sap that hardens over weeks into golden tears, later steam-distilled or solvent-extracted for perfumery.
How it smells
Fresh, resinous and luminous, with a clean coniferous-citrus brightness from alpha-pinene and limonene over a dry, balsamic woody base. It carries a cool, peppery, almost lemony lift, then settles into the warm, dusty incense smoke familiar from churches and temples.
In perfumery
Used in heart and base, it adds a meditative, smoky resinous spine and a soaring transparency. It pairs with myrrh, rose, oud and labdanum, and lifts heavy oriental accords. It centers many incense-built compositions and defines the cathedral-incense theme.
Good to know
Frankincense has been traded for thousands of years and once moved along Arabian incense routes as one of antiquity's costliest imports. Wild Boswellia populations are now declining from over-tapping, drought and grazing, raising real concern over the long-term sustainability of the harvest.
Fragrance Character
The top is fruit and conifer at once, crushed blackberry against cold fir and juniper berries, sharpened by the incense breath of copal and palo santo with boronia humming apricot underneath. In the heart, agarwood rises through gardenia, narcissus and lotus, the florals cool and watery rather than sweet. Then it settles and stays: ambergris and jade wood over damp oakmoss and pine needle absolute, salt-lit, enormous, and still going ten hours later.
Best Worn
Crisp winter and early spring days, worn for the ease of an ordinary afternoon outdoors, where blackberry and resinous fir settle into woods that feel right against the cold.
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The Vibe
The Nose
Jono Bornstein
Founder and perfumer
Founder and perfumer of Folkwinds, launched in 2022 to showcase North American aromatic materials. He works over 90 percent natural and American sourced, on Folkwinds American Pharoah, Folkwinds Cloud Illusions, Folkwinds Santi Ana, Folkwinds Jasper No Kodo and Folkwinds Smoke Jumping.
More by this noseCrimson and CloverMidwinter StormJasper no Kodō III
The Maison
Folkwinds
Foraged perfumery: wild herbs, resins and woods gathered before they are distilled.
Folkwinds smells like the edge of a forest after weather has moved through it. Real foraged materials and stacked oud registers, leaning strange and beautiful rather than polite. Expect fermented fruit, cold resins, damp bark, smoke, and orris so dense it reads as a texture instead of a note. Runs vary between batches, which is part of the point.
- Known for
- Foraged naturals, stacked oud








































