I often like to reference objects when blending perfumes—everyday things just spark ideas. This one’s built from two accords: Sake (Koji) and Sweet Pea.
Let’s start with Sweet Pea. Chinese New Year, I was walking through the Flower Market in Hong Kong looking for flowers to decorate my home. Everything was too traditional - nothing captured my attention visually and smelled good (raised bar as a perfumer). Then I suddenly caught a glimpse of some light blue-purple flowers outside a shop — with small petals so thin you could almost see through them, super delicate, and the scent was amazing. Sweet Pea. I knew it right away.
Sweet Pea has no oil you can distill due to a low yield, so all accords in the market is made up. Old perfumery books say it’s rose + orange blossom + citrus: floral, not too sweet, with a little tangy kick. I kept the real flowers on my blending table, sniffing next to my materials until my blend felt realistic. (Same way I did Ethereal Lilies)
It’s a nice floral that I really liked, but I wanted something more given it is lacking a bit of top notes. I thought about what to add for weeks. Then I remembered: a few years ago I took a Koji fermentation class and learned to make Amazake from rice. Sake uses Koji too, so it has that same soft sweet-floral smell. I’d even tried blending a Koji accord before -- that's the potential I thought it might have. The two accords felt like they could be matching —so I dug into the venture.
I studied the top notes which made up Sake's signature scent -- plenty of esters (the main one resembles a banana) plus a slightly lactonic scent. I have also added a very special ingredient—4-MMP, the ingredient that gives Shine Muscat grapes their bright floral shine, which is also present in some good Sake. It’s crazy strong so I diluted it to 0.0001% but my whole studio smelled like grapefruit for days.
The hard part was balance. I mixed, sniffed and started over. Some versions were all like sake that went off. Others lost the flower as ingredients for Sake has a more dominating scent. After many trials, I confirmed with this one - floral enough in which the Sweet Koji is still present, yet not losing the Sake part - opens like fresh Sake just poured which citrus notes —then turns soft and floral, ending with clean musks.
Making strange accords this year has been so much fun.
Jo
Oct 2025
