Sandalwood Smell Test: Mysore vs Australian vs New Caledonian vs Javanol

Sandalwood is one of perfumery’s most important materials - but what does it actually smell like? In this materials episode, I compare four different sandalwood materials side by side: Mysore sandalwood, Australian sandalwood, New Caledonian sandalwood, and the synthetic sandalwood molecule Javanol. The results surprised me. The Mysore sandalwood gives that classic creamy, earthy, wet-clay sandalwood profile. The Australian sandalwood is much woodier, buttery and almost fungal - closer to a damp forest floor or agarwood nuance than the classic sandalwood smell. The New Caledonian sandalwood sits somewhere between the two, while Javanol shows how a synthetic sandalwood molecule can be useful structurally, even if it doesn’t fully capture the complexity of the natural material. This is not a marketing note breakdown. It’s a direct smell test from the materials themselves. If you’ve worked with sandalwood materials in DIY perfumery, or if you have a favourite sandalwood fragrance, let me know in the comments. 02:47 Smelling Mysore sandalwood 06:20 Smelling Australian sandalwood 08:15 Smelling New Caledonian sandalwood 09:59 Smelling Javanol 11:50 24-hour drydown test 14:21 Final verdict: which sandalwood would I use? #Sandalwood #Perfumery #FragranceNotes #DIYPerfumery #NaturalPerfumery #FragranceReview