Scent profile: floral, sweet, rich, herbaceous.
Curious little pockets of bright, tiny flowers clustered together like baubles in an elder tree, elderflower unfurls in late spring to brighten hedgerows and woodlands with their sweet, floral scent. The gnarled knobbly elder tree has been revered throughout history in medicine and witchcraft, planted to heal and ward off evil spirits! Now, though, elderflower is heralded for its powdery and effervescent nature.
When used in fragrance, elderflower typically falls as a heart or base note which may come across as peculiar given its stereotype as a classic floral. To assume this, though, would be to do elderflower an injustice in that its longevity comes from that hit of spice and richness that other more quintessential florals lack.
Elderflower is such a nostalgic scent for me not least because it reminds me of the most darling trip I took with my parents to England in the winter of 2013. Sat cosied up in a rickety old pub in the heart of Temple, we shared fish and chips over a tall glass of sparkling elderflower cordial. Love at first sip is an understatement and now every time I open the bottle of elderflower cordial at home, the sweet rose-esque scent wafting from the bottle brings on an instant throwback to that moment, and every other elderflower coloured moment since.
You see, taste and scent diffuse through time and memory itself. They call this the Proust Effect, and the most wonderful description of how this works comes from Proust himself when talking about the tea-soaked crumbs of a madeleine:
Immediately the old grey house upon the street rose up like a stage set… the house, the town, the square where I was sent before lunch, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took… in that moment… the whole of Combray and of its surroundings… sprang into being, town and gardens alike, all from my cup of tea.
Scent and nostalgia are irrevocably intertwined because the olfactory bulb (where we process scent) is nestled in the limbic system, otherwise known as the brain’s emotional centre. Here, our brains work through memories and so memory and scent become emotionally knotted together. For elderflower, the scent is evergreen and reminiscent of a balmy late spring, the kind brushed by the sweetness of childhood.
Elderflower has a starring role in Cavendish Ave.’s Regent’s Park candle, mingling so sweetly with the deep rain accord to produce what must be nostalgia personified for if there’s two scents that drip with beautiful nostalgia, rain and elderflower take the cake. Taking inspiration from a classic British teatime pairing, the fragrance infuses lemon zest to lighten the scent, and rose melds easily to elderflower’s floral umbrella.
Cavendish Ave.'s summertime reverie scent, Hugo Sea, is also awash with elderflower but in the most sparkling and refreshing way. Elderflower mingles with prosecco and fruity accords such as grapefruit and mango to create a fun, light and dreamy fragrance with a timelessness that speaks to a wistful summer along a beautiful, rocky coastline.