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 tincturing, 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 tincture 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 cutand-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 orris root tincturein making their own Orris tincture.