Raspberry

Juicy, sweet and fruity, with a slightly tart freshness, a green undertone and a soft, almost powdery, violet-like warmth.

The raspberry (Rubus idaeus) belongs to the rose family and is native to Europe and northern Asia; today it is grown in temperate regions worldwide. The plant has a perennial root system, while its canes live for only about two years: they grow in the first year, then fruit and die back in the second. Botanically, the raspberry is not a berry but an aggregate fruit made up of many small drupelets, each enclosing a single seed.

Raspberries yield no essential oil, and natural raspberry extracts play hardly any role in perfumery. Even the characteristic raspberry ketone is present in the fruit only in traces of 1 to 4 mg per kilogram, so recovering it naturally is laborious and costly. Industrially, it is therefore usually built from 4-hydroxybenzaldehyde and acetone and then hydrogenated; the ionones are likewise made synthetically from citral and acetone. Perfumers assemble the raspberry note as an accord from these and other molecules.

Raspberry is mostly used in the top and heart of a fragrance, where it adds a juicy, sweet-tart fruitiness. Through the ionones it has a natural kinship with violet and powdery, iris-like notes, which is why it is often paired with floral accords. In our range it sits in the top of 40 out of 65 fragrances.

Fruity · Floral · top and heart note

Summer raspberries ripen in roughly June and July, depending on variety and region, while autumn raspberries fruit on the new canes from August until the first frost. The raspberry accord in perfume, by contrast, does not depend on the harvest, as its key molecules are produced synthetically.

In our fragrances, it often appears alongside Vanilla, patchouli, musk, amber, bergamot, rose, jasmine.

The botanical name Rubus idaeus means 'bramble of Ida' and refers to Mount Ida, where, according to tradition, the plant grew in abundance. The Roman agricultural writer Palladius already described raspberry cultivation in the 4th century AD. A decisive year for perfumery was 1893, when Ferdinand Tiemann and Paul Krüger first synthesised ionones from citral and acetone – molecules now regarded as key building blocks of raspberry aroma.

• Raspberries are hollow inside: when picked, the receptacle stays on the plant as a white cone – with blackberries, it comes away with the fruit.
• Raspberry ketone is not found only in fruit: some orchids release it from their flowers to attract male fruit flies.
• The very same ionones that smell of violets are among the most important aroma compounds in raspberries.

The signature raspberry molecule is raspberry ketone, also called rheosmin (C₁₀H₁₂O₂, PubChem CID 21648, molar mass about 164 g/mol, melting point about 83 °C); the plant builds it from p-coumaroyl-CoA and malonyl-CoA in two enzyme steps. At least as important for the aroma are α-ionone (C₁₃H₂₀O, CID 5282108) and β-ionone (C₁₃H₂₀O, CID 638014), which contribute floral, violet-like nuances. The green, grassy freshness comes partly from (Z)-3-hexenol (C₆H₁₂O, CID 5281167). In total, more than 200 volatile compounds have been identified in raspberries, yet only a few of them carry the typical raspberry scent.