"In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous"

Aristotle

Welcome back to my...um...very irregular series of blogs on some of the more weird and wonderful essential oils I'm using in my perfumes! Today I'm introducing you to sweet gale, mostly because it's a component of the perfume I'm road testing right now, Mellona. I'd never heard of sweet gale before my favourite UK oil supplier started stocking it, so before I took the plunge and bought some, I did some snooping around online to find out something about the plant. And it turned out I actually had heard of it already...just by another name. Bog myrtle.

Yeah. Bog myrtle. It doesn't exactly conjure up images of fragrant oils and perfumed beauties, does it? Historically, sweet gale has been used as a remedy for everything from stomach aches to liver problems, and is a key ingredient in many traditional creole folk remedies. In Scotland it's traditionally used to ward off midges, and in the Middle Ages it was used in North-Western Europe as a flavouring in beer. And it's still used to make schnaps in places like Denmark and Sweden today. All very interesting, and clearly great if I want to make moonshine or insect repellent but I don't do either of those things at the moment.

So the real question is, what's its perfume pedigree? Well, apparently sweet gale is a common component of Royal Wedding bouquets, so there's got to be more to the scent than beer and bugs, right? The most basic description I could find of the scent was "resinous and sweet," which was encouraging if not totally inspiring. But the description on my supplier's site was far more poetic and when the chance came up to buy a bottle at a discount, I decided to snap some up and see for myself.

And I fell in love instantly.

This is a bright, clean scent with a herbaceous hint here and there. There's a purity to it that reminds me of citrus, but it lacks the sugary-sweetness of orange essential oil and has a lighter body than lemon or grapefruit. It just screams out for fresh, green oils to enhance that lightness, and some sweet notes to complement its own herbaceous qualities. When I was brainstorming ideas for Spring perfumes and read up on Mellona, the Roman goddess of honey, I knew sweet gale had to be part of her perfume - the idea of sweet gale and honey together seemed perfect.

Going for a light, luscious mix, I took sweet gale and honey as my starting point and added in nectarine, sweet grass, lemon blossom, and a touch of earthy hop (which, incidentally, supplanted sweet gale as a beer ingredient in the sixteenth century). And they play off each other beautifully. Honey can be a very heavy and pervasive fragrance oil, but paired with the sweet gale and rounded off with the hop, it's less in-your-face and much lighter. The fresh grass and juicy nectarine notes are brightened by the sweet gale, and the lemon blossom is just drifting about there, adding a lovely, soft note to the proceedings. I love that this is a Spring scent that isn't floral-based, and I think it's going to make a great addition to my catalogue.

Since my supplier also recommends pairing sweet gale with a few other oils I own but haven't experimented with yet, I foresee it popping up in future perfumes too. I don't really get the resinous note others have mentioned, but I can see it working well with earthy, incensey oils like frankincense or peru balsam. In the mean time, I can't wait to share Mellona with you and see if you love bog myrtle as much as I do!