Folkwinds
Midwinter Storm
The Story
Part of Folkwinds' Reserve Series, Midwinter Storm is conceived as a full-spectrum orris soliflore, built from every natural iris material and isolate available, stacked at the highest possible concentrations. The powdery iris foundation is grounded by top-tier agarwoods, with sandalwood taking the place of the more conventional benzoin. Released in 2026 as a strictly limited edition of 50 bottles.
Floral
Petals in soft full bloom
The rounded, dewy scent of flowers in bloom, soft and slightly sweet with a powdery, nectar-like glow. It reads romantic and gentle, conjuring a garden in late spring and a feeling of lightness against the skin.
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.
Powdery
Soft hush of dressed skin
A velvety, slightly dry softness of iris root, violet, and fine talc, like face powder or clean linen warmed by skin. It feels intimate, refined, and nostalgic, blurring a fragrance into a gentle, cushioned haze.
Fresh
Clean air after cool water
A crisp, transparent brightness that suggests cool water, washed skin, and open air, often laced with a zesty or aquatic lift. It feels clean and weightless, instantly cooling and uncomplicated, like stepping outside after a rain.
Lactonic
creamy milk and warm skin
A creamy, milky softness reminiscent of warm steamed milk, milk skin, or coconut flesh without the sweetness. It feels plush and enveloping, smoothing florals and woods into something tender and slightly nostalgic, like the comfort of warm dairy.
Ice Cider
Orchard fruit gone warm and faintly boozy
What it is
An evocative accord rather than a single raw material, built to conjure pressed apples fermenting toward cider. Perfumers reconstruct it from fruity esters, apple aroma molecules, a touch of acetic tang and warm spice, since fermented cider itself is not distilled for scent.
How it smells
Crushed ripe apple, sweet and juicy, edged with a tart vinegary sparkle and a soft yeasty, faintly boozy warmth. Mulling spices of cinnamon, clove and nutmeg often hover at the edges, giving an autumnal, just-pressed orchard impression that feels cozy and a little tipsy.
In perfumery
A heart accord driving fruity-gourmand and seasonal autumn compositions. It blends with cinnamon, caramel, brown sugar, woods and ambers, and sits naturally beside other orchard and harvest notes. It anchors cozy fall and apple-orchard themed fragrances and home scents.
Good to know
The bright apple lift in such accords often leans on alpha-damascone, a rose-ketone prized for its fruity apple effect with floral and plum nuances. So beneath the juice and spice a cider note can carry a surprising soft rosy glow from that single molecule.
Rye Spice
Caraway-dark crust of warm rye loaf
What it is
Rye Spice is the warm, aromatic facet of rye grain and its bread rather than a single distilled oil. Perfumers reconstruct it from caraway, cumin and fennel-type seed materials layered over toasted-grain and yeasty accords, echoing the dark loaf that rye flour bakes into.
How it smells
Astringent, peppery caraway leads, edged with anise coolness and warm cumin. Beneath sits toasted crust, a sourdough tang and a faintly earthy, molasses sweetness. The overall impression reads dry, grainy and rustic, more savoury bakery than dessert, with a lingering seeded warmth.
In perfumery
Used as a gourmand-spice bridge, it lends edible warmth to amber, tobacco and leather bases and pairs with coffee, fig, immortelle and dark woods. It anchors playful bread-and-grain accords, the kind of rustic loaf effect explored in Demeter's Rye Bread and savoury niche gourmands.
Good to know
Caraway, the seed that defines rye's character, is not the grain itself but a spice baked into the dough. Its pungency comes from S-carvone, the mirror-image twin of the R-carvone that makes spearmint smell cool and sweet, the same atoms built the opposite way.
Blueberry
A berry with no extract behind it
What it is
Blueberry carries too little volatile oil to distil or extract, so no blueberry essential oil, absolute or CO2 extract exists at commercial scale. Every blueberry note is an accord. The aroma-chemical route rests on ethyl 2-methylbutanoate, gamma-decalactone, methyl anthranilate and raspberry ketone, with a trace of beta-damascenone. Botanical houses have no berry extract either and work sideways, through osmanthus, orris and violet leaf.
How it smells
The aroma-chemical build is vivid and immediate, cool blue-purple, candied and high in definition, and it holds that shape through the opening. A botanical reconstruction reads softer and hazier, jammier and greener, closer to suggestion than to snapshot, and it moves as it dries, the fruit slipping toward flowers and powder.
In perfumery
Blueberry belongs to the top and early heart of fruity florals, gourmands and fresh compositions, where it flatters violet, soft woods and musk. It is fugitive in either build and usually needs musks or lactones underneath to register past the opening. The chemical route carries at trace dose, while the botanical route asks for more material and more balancing.
Good to know
With no bottled blueberry to measure against, a convincing berry is always a piece of construction. Aroma-chemicals repeat exactly and hold up in bases that would flatten naturals. Osmanthus, orris and violet leaf cost more, shift with harvest, and give a quieter, less literal berry that keeps changing on skin.
White Spruce
Cool northern forest air made fragrant
What it is
A tall evergreen conifer, Picea rubens, native to eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, ranging from the Adirondacks down the Appalachians. The aroma material is an essential oil steam-distilled from the freshly cut needles and small twigs of the tree.
How it smells
Softer and sweeter than most evergreen oils, with a clean balsamic, resinous heart. It opens fresh and green with a crisp coniferous snap, then reveals gentle woody warmth and a subtle fruity facet, rounder and less sharp than pine or fir needle oils.
In perfumery
A fresh top-to-heart note bringing airy, forest-clean character to woody, aromatic and fougere accords. It pairs with cedar, fir balsam, vetiver and citrus, lending a crisp, outdoorsy evergreen lift especially suited to cool-weather and coniferous compositions.
Good to know
Spruce gum, the hardened resin of red and black spruce, was chewed across rural North America and sold by John Curtis from 1848 as the continent's first commercial chewing gum. Red spruce also supplies prized resonant tonewood for guitar and violin soundboards.
Orris
Powdered violet rooted in patient buried earth
What it is
Orris is the aroma material from the rhizome of iris flowers, chiefly Iris pallida grown in the hills of Tuscany. The roots are harvested, dried and aged three to six years so slow oxidation develops the irones, then ground and steam-distilled into a waxy, ivory orris butter.
How it smells
A cool, powdery violet scent with a suede-like, almost edible carrot-and-raw-flour facet. It reads dry rather than sweet, evoking face powder, soft leather and damp soil, carrying a silvery, slightly metallic shimmer that feels both floral and rooty at once.
In perfumery
A heart and base material prized for its body and a powdery lift that smooths sharp florals and woods. It pairs with violet, rose, iris leaf and ambrette. It defines a whole lineage of refined powdery-iris and aldehydic-floral compositions.
Good to know
Orris ranks among the costliest naturals in perfumery. A ton of aged rhizome yields only about two kilograms of orris butter, and high-irone grades can exceed one hundred thousand dollars per kilogram, the cost driven by years of aging before any scent develops.
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.
Vanilla
The warm sweet heart of comfort itself
What it is
Vanilla comes from the cured seed pods of Vanilla planifolia, a climbing orchid native to Mexico and Central America, now grown mainly in Madagascar and Indonesia; the vanilla of Tahiti is a different species, Vanilla x tahitensis. Green pods are picked unripe, then blanched, sweated in the sun and slow-dried over months until they darken and develop their aroma and vanillin.
How it smells
Sweet, warm and creamy, with a balsamic depth recalling custard, caramel and dried fruit, a faint smoky tobacco-like edge sitting underneath. It opens soft and gourmand, then dries into a powdery resinous warmth that clings close to skin and reads richer than synthetic vanillin alone.
In perfumery
A base note prized for richness and lasting warmth, vanilla rounds sharp edges and anchors oriental and gourmand compositions. It pairs naturally with tonka, amber, sandalwood and spice. Many of the most enduring oriental and tobacco fragrances build their core around it.
Good to know
Vanilla ranks among the costliest spices because each orchid flower opens for one day and must be hand-pollinated, a technique devised in 1841 by Edmond Albius, a twelve-year-old enslaved boy on Réunion. Most commercial vanilla flavor now relies on synthetic vanillin.
Silver Tigerwood
The distilled resin and the accord that imitates it
What it is
Oud is the fragrant resinous heartwood of Aquilaria trees and the oil distilled from it. The same word covers chips burned over coals, distilled attars whose character shifts with species, soil and still, and the woody-amber accords built to stand in for them. Most commercial oud is the accord.
How it smells
A distilled oil moves. It opens fermented, sour or barnyard, passes through leather, dried fruit and honey, then settles into resin and warm skin, rarely reading the same twice in one evening. An accord holds still: dry, smoky, faintly medicinal, polished from the first minute to the last.
In perfumery
Connoisseurs chase regional signatures the way collectors chase terroir: dense fecal Hindi, sweet fruity Cambodi, camphorous Borneo, and above them all kyara, the rarest and most prized grade. Most commercial oud, by contrast, is a synthetic accord, built from woody-amber and musky-woody materials that deliver consistency, stability and scale at a fraction of the cost.
Good to know
Two things separate the real from the built. A real distillation varies batch to batch and keeps moving on skin, while an accord smells the same bottle to bottle and stays linear. Aquilaria is CITES Appendix II, which regulates the trade rather than banning it, and Annotation 14 exempts finished retail products while wood chips, beads and carvings still travel on permits.
Wild Malinau
Vaporous blue-green agarwood, camphor lifted over ripe fruit
What it is
Genuine agarwood (Aquilaria) distilled from trees grown on Borneo, the Indonesian Kalimantan side and the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, among the oldest rainforests on earth. The finest examples work from real, single-origin Bornean wood rather than a reconstructed "oud" base, so the oil carries the terroir of that specific island. Borneo's distinct species and soil yield a resin profile that no synthetic oud accord reproduces.
How it smells
The signature is a high, vaporous "blue-green" lift: bright camphor and a cool mentholated whistle that some describe as magic-marker or eucalyptus, riding above ripe stone fruit (pear, peach, apricot) and a soft berry sweetness. Underneath sits a clean, golden-woody, faintly creamy base with green-floral and powdery facets, never sour or fecal. It reads airy and luminous, more forest-canopy than forest-floor.
In perfumery
Borneo oud is prized as a base note that stays lifted and radiant rather than heavy, giving a composition long wear without the funk. It marries beautifully with rose, sandalwood, amber, and green florals, its fruity-camphor top brightening a blend where Hindi would darken it. In a natural attar it can be worn neat, the camphor evaporating to reveal the fruity-woody heart over hours.
Good to know
Compare it directly to its siblings: Hindi (Assam) oud opens animalic and barnyard (hay, dung, leather); Cambodi is sweet, sticky, and jammy with red berries; Thai/Trat leans warm and resinous. Borneo splits the difference and adds the camphoraceous blue note that is uniquely its own, drier and cooler than Cambodi, cleaner and fruitier than Hindi. Genuine Bornean agarwood is scarce and slow to distill, which is why a real single-origin oil commands its price.
Purple Thai Malaccensis
Smoky leather and embered medicinal woods
What it is
Thai oud is distilled from Aquilaria crassna grown in eastern Thailand, with Trat province on the Cambodian border its most celebrated source, the same Cardamom Mountains range that yields Khmer oud. Wood is often aged for years before distillation, building the depth that defines the region's character.
How it smells
Leathery, smoky and medicinal, opening with a plush full-bodied smokiness like smouldering embers. A distinctive fruity sweetness threads through tannic leather, warm spice and honeyed tobacco, with camphorous, almost antiseptic facets that give Thai oud its bracing, resinous edge and a faint animalic warmth.
In perfumery
Thai oud bridges the sweet Cambodian and animalic Hindi styles, offering smoky leather depth without overwhelming funk, which makes it valued by artisanal distillers and blenders alike. Trat oils in particular are sought for a balanced, full-bodied profile that wears richly on skin.
Good to know
Sharing the Cardamom range with Cambodian crassna, Thai border ouds can echo Khmer sweetness while carrying more leather and smoke. Long pre-distillation ageing rounds the medicinal sharpness, and the best sustainably sourced Trat oil rivals far costlier origins for complexity.
Santalols
Creamy meditative woods that breathe in slowly
What it is
Sandalwood oil is steam-distilled from the heartwood and roots of slow-growing Santalum trees, classically Santalum album of Mysore, India. As the wild Indian source neared collapse, plantations of the same species in tropical Western Australia now supply much of the world's perfumery-grade oil.
How it smells
Soft, creamy and milky, with a smooth woody warmth and a faintly sweet, rosy, almost buttery edge. It carries no sharpness, only a rounded balsamic depth. It stays remarkably steady on skin, glowing quietly for hours rather than opening and drying in distinct stages.
In perfumery
A base note valued as both scent and fixative, sandalwood lends creaminess, warmth and a meditative softness that binds compositions together. It pairs beautifully with rose, jasmine, vetiver and spice. Many meditative woody and incense fragrances celebrate it at their heart.
Good to know
Genuine Mysore sandalwood was so overharvested that India tightened export controls and the wild tree became vulnerable, with oil prices reported around two thousand dollars per kilogram. Plantations of Santalum album grown near Kununurra in Western Australia now sustainably recreate the original creamy profile.
Fragrance Character
Ice cider and rye cut tart and brisk through a shimmer of white spruce before the iris arrives in full force, starchy and cool, edged by oakmoss and a whisper of aglaia. In the heart, the orris softens almost imperceptibly, vanilla and blue lotus lending a faint floral sweetness without ever diluting the powder. The drydown is deep and close, Borneo and Thai oud fusing with sandalwood into something resinous and skin-warm, the iris still present but now felt more than smelled.
Longevity
how long it stays on skin
This gauge reads the expected wear time, how many hours the fragrance keeps speaking on skin before it fades. A marker near the low end means a few fleeting hours, while a marker pushed to the far end promises a scent still present from morning into night.
Sillage
the size of its scent trail
This reads how far the fragrance reaches beyond you and the trail it leaves behind. Low sits soft against the skin, an intimate whisper noticed only up close; high climbs through moderate and strong toward enormous, filling a room and lingering in the air after you have left it.
Experimental
For the bold and curious
Unconventional, boundary-pushing scents for someone who wants to provoke a reaction and stand apart. Suited to artistic, challenging compositions: inky tar, rubber, fermented fruit, metallic or animalic facets that defy easy liking. On this wheel a glowing coin means it rewards the adventurous nose, a dim one means it plays things safe.
Office
Polished but never overpowering
Close-quarters professional settings where a scent should be noticed only by those near you. Suited to restrained, clean compositions with modest projection: tidy citrus, soft musk, pale woods that read competent and considerate. On this wheel a glowing coin means it works in shared workspaces, a dim one means it carries too far.
Evening
After dark, turned up
Dinners, drinks, and nights out when a fragrance can deepen and project with confidence. Suited to richer, warmer compositions: ambers, resins, smoky woods, or plush florals that bloom under low light. On this wheel a glowing coin means the scent comes alive after sundown, a dim one means it stays better suited to daytime.
Romantic
Close enough to be felt
Intimate moments and date nights meant to draw someone nearer. Suited to warm, sensual compositions that hum against skin: creamy florals, vanilla, soft musk, a touch of spice or amber that invites closeness. On this wheel a glowing coin means it sets an alluring mood, a dim one means it leans more practical than seductive.
Formal
Refined for the occasion that matters
Weddings, ceremonies, galas, and dressed-up affairs that call for composure and elegance. Suited to polished, structured scents with quiet authority: smooth woods, refined florals, soft leather, nothing loud or playful. On this wheel a glowing coin means it carries the right gravitas, a dim one means it feels too casual for the room.
Casual
Easy comfort for unhurried days
Everyday wear with no agenda: errands, coffee, friends, a slow weekend. Suited to soft, approachable scents that feel clean and natural, like fresh citrus, light woods, or a gentle skin warmth. On this wheel a glowing coin means the fragrance fits these laid-back moments, a dim one means it asks for more.
Day to Night
where its mood naturally falls
This slider reads the hour the fragrance was made for. A marker to the left leans luminous and bright, easy in daylight and open air; slide it right and the character turns deeper and warmer, the kind of presence that belongs to evening and candlelit rooms.
Winter
Warmth that carries through cold air
Cold air mutes and slows a fragrance, so winter rewards the dense and the warm: resins, smoke, vanilla, leather, and ambered spice that radiate heat against the chill. The bar shows how strongly this particular scent holds up and glows in cold weather.
Spring
Fresh blooms in mild, rising warmth
Mild, humid air lifts lighter compositions beautifully, so spring favors dewy florals, green stems, soft powder, and transparent citrus that feel alive rather than heavy. The bar shows how well this particular scent matches that fresh, gently warming season.
Summer
Bright and airy in real heat
Heat amplifies and projects scent hard, so summer calls for cool, crisp, breathable things: sharp citrus, salty marine air, aromatic herbs, and watery freshness that refresh instead of cloy. The bar shows how comfortably this particular scent wears in real warmth.
Fall
Spiced warmth for cooling days
As temperatures drop, richer materials read clearly without smothering, so autumn suits dry woods, warm spice, tobacco, amber, and golden fruit that feel cozy and contemplative. The bar shows how naturally this particular scent settles into crisp, cooling days.
Best Worn
Made for the coldest, darkest months, this is a fragrance for formal evenings when the occasion demands presence, worn by someone who understands powder not as softness but as weight.
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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 noseJasper No Kodo 2Crimson and CloverJasper 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
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