Vetiver
Dry earth, cut roots, grapefruit peel and clean wood with a faint smoky bitterness.
You may know it from The earthy smell of freshly dug roots after rain
Where it comes from
Steam-distilled from the roots of vetiver grass.
Botanical name: Chrysopogon zizanioides
About vetiver
Vetiver is a grass, Chrysopogon zizanioides, native to India, and perfumery uses its roots. It is usually filed with the woods all the same. The best oil is said to come from roots 18 to 24 months old, which are dug up, cleaned, dried and steam-distilled. One perfumer's figures put the yield at 10 to 15 kg of oil from a tonne of dried roots.
Where it grows changes the smell. Haiti, Java and India are the main producers, with smaller amounts from China and Réunion. In Haiti the harvest runs from January to July around Les Cayes, on hillsides too poor for food crops; the clumps are pulled out with a pickaxe and slips are replanted. Givaudan, which sources there, describes Haitian oil as citrusy, fresh, bitter and green, and Javanese oil as very smoky. Réunion's "Bourbon vetiver", grown on the island since about 1900, is the one two of the sources rank highest.
More than 150 components have been identified in the oil, khusimol and the vetivones among them. Perfumers also use vetiveryl acetate, made by acetylating the alcohols in the oil. It smells smokier and smoother than the oil, with fewer facets and less of the woody side. IFRA restricts the acetate for skin sensitisation, but the plain oil is not covered by that Standard.
As a headline note for men, vetiver arrived in the late 1950s: Carven Vétiver in 1957, then Givenchy and Guerlain around 1959, by Perfume Shrine's account of the period. In the base of a perfume it also works as a fixative, and it is used that way very widely.
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing Vetiver in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to Vetiver most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with Vetiver
Fragrances that list it in their notes, most-rated first.
Houses that use it most
Ranked by how many of their well-known fragrances list Vetiver.