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Osmo Scent Taxonomy: A perfumer's introduction.
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Introducing: Osmo Scent Taxonomy
An open-source resource for a more scent-literate world
To curious noses,
We have created a new tool for smell enthusiasts—not only for perfumers and fragrance connoisseurs, but also for wine lovers, foodies, researchers, data scientists, artists, and creators.
Osmo’s Universal Reference Scent Taxonomy is now a public, open-source framework designed to describe all possible smells. Our aim is to offer a shared language for any “scent activity.” (Here is our Scent Taxonomy wheel and list of terms.)
This taxonomy will evolve—as scientists, linguists, perfumers, flavorists, and curious noses collectively push the boundaries of how we describe what we smell.
Why we built this taxonomy:
The aim is to describe any smell in the world by the selection of one or more GRAND FAMILIES, SUBFAMILIES, DESCRIPTORS, and TEXTURES & SENSATIONS.
This is not about reducing scent to data, though we believe scent can be an invaluable data source for researchers and innovators. This taxonomy is meant to offer a shared vocabulary to describe what we smell—without replacing the poetry, subjective impressions, and cultural nuances that make scent such a special medium, conveyed by complex literary texts.
This is not a business venture; it is a contribution to collective knowledge and communication. We intend to provide common points of reference for olfactory communities, academic researchers, students, educators, and others who pay special attention to scent.
Our goal is to establish a simple yet comprehensive system. No marketing fluff. Instead, a well-organized, thoroughly vetted reference for scents.
How we built this:
Our taxonomy is the result of research across dozens of public sources. We gathered scent terminology from a wide range of fragrance and flavor literature, wine and food lexicons, academic olfactory studies, medical and cultural references, and historical documents.
Every term was cross-examined for months for its usefulness in describing smell—with an eye toward clarity, precision, and universality.
To test its efficacy, our team put the taxonomy into daily practice for over a year, gathering feedback from experts across industries, cultures, and geographies.
We have also used this taxonomy internally at Osmo and Generation by Osmo. Every member of our team goes through scent training, learning to identify the odor families in this taxonomy. The algorithms behind our proprietary Olfactory Intelligence (OI) system have also been trained to categorize odors using this taxonomy, an important step in our digitization of smell.
Taxonomy structure:
This taxonomy comes as a tiered structure made of:
- GRAND FAMILIES (11)
- SUBFAMILIES (64)
- DESCRIPTORS (159)
- TEXTURES & SENSATIONS (33)
DESCRIPTORS are qualities or adjectives—not particular objects. Think “woody” or “mossy,” rather than “pine tree” and “oakmoss”. When objects are required to describe other smells, we adapt them into adjective DESCRIPTORS like “labdanumy,” “strawberric,” “patchouliesque,” “fougery.”
TEXTURES & SENSATIONS are qualities that are not smells in themselves, but shape how smells are perceived. They are indeed part of an olfactory perception, and thus deserve to be included in a thorough academic system.
How it works:
Our key principles are as follows:
- Any SUBFAMILY can be combined with any GRAND FAMILY. Any DESCRIPTOR can be combined with any GRAND FAMILY or SUBFAMILY.
A grouping of certain subfamilies under their most common grand family is only for summary reasons. The groupings and genealogy are navigational aids, not rigid rules and routes.
- The same smell can be described through multiple “routes.”
Consider how the same pinky-orange color of a tulip might be described as Peachy or Salmony. Scent perception is as layered and contextual as color perception—although not much more, contrary to popular belief.
The scent of boiled chestnuts could be “Woody Nutty Starchy,” or “Soulful Starchy Nutty.” The scent of snowbells could be “Mineral Wet Floral Mimosic,” or “Floral Mineral Wet Mimosic.” The scent of ginger could be “Woody Spicy Citrus,” or “Herbal Lemony Woody."
Why open source:
We’re sharing this taxonomy in the spirit of radical transparency, collective progress, and mutual understanding. Scent deserves a reference system as open, precise, and evolving as the worlds of taste, color, or sound.
We believe in building a more scent-literate future.
With love from your fellow smellers,
Christophe Laudamiel and the Osmo team
Click to download the Osmo Scent Taxonomy, or explore the open-source GitHub.
Acknowledgements:
We would especially like to thank Sandra Barvaux, Pierre Bénard, Hugo Denutte, Tanja Deurloo, Zerlina Dubois, Catherine Ganahl, Frauke Galia, Nick Gilbert, Claire Guillemin, Namiko Hirose, Akari Hoshi, Andreas Keller, Mike Kinsey, Bharti Lalwani, Pascaline Lepelletier, Pia Long, Jamal Shafiq, Diane St Clair, Rafael Trujillo and Saskia Wilson-Brown for their feedback, guidance, and encouragements.
Appendix
Most of our GRAND FAMILY and SUBFAMILY terminology aligns with preexisting food and fragrance traditions, with a few exceptions.
GRAND FAMILY clarifications
Of our 11 total GRAND FAMILIES, the following might need explanation:
- MINERAL: Includes notes such as wet (preferred over “aquatic” or “watery”), marine, salty, sulphuric (like matches, fireworks, lava), metallic, and aldehydic.
- ANIMALIC: Includes notes that are leathery, horsey, barny, fecal, and greasy/hairy or fur-like (goaty/camelly, as opposed to the texture of “furry” which could be used as a texture rather than a family). Also includes sweaty and urine notes.
- SWEET/BALSAMIC: Includes sweet notes, lactonic notes, sweet resins (as opposed to piney resins which would be categorized as woody), and gourmand accords.
- INDUSTRIAL: Includes notes such as turpentine/solvent/chemical, burnt plastic, clean or burnt rubbers, bleach/swimming pool, medicinal, clinical. We believe these notes are not well represented in other families, and are typically underrepresented fragrance, flavor, and wine classifications.
- SOULFUL: Includes notes that are starchy, steamed pasta/rice notes, farinaceous notes (flour-y, or the non-earthiness of “mushroomy”), and nurturing greasy/oily notes (not milky lactonic, which are in the sweet/balsamic family and not primarily animalic). We feel these nurturing notes do not belong to any other family—a kind of umami aspect of smells. While these notes are not well represented in typical fragrance wheels, they are present in food or mushroom wheels. We can certainly smell them.
SUBFAMILY clarifications
Nearly all of our SUBFAMILIES are self-explanatory, carefully designed to reduce overlap and promote clarity across cultures and professions. Three notable cases:
- “Spicy” is included in our taxonomy as a SUBFAMILY only, not a GRAND FAMILY. We believe that spices are covered under the GRAND FAMILIES of Woody (Saffron, Nutmeg, Cinnamon), Sweet/Balsamic (Cinnamon), Herbal (Cardamom, Nutmeg, Ginger), or Citrus (Ginger). We feel that Spicy evokes a disparate mix of food items (strongly scented at low dosage) spanning odor and taste families. But we do not feel that Spicy is a primary smell category as such.
- Our taxonomy does not use the term “Ambery” as a GRAND FAMILY or SUBFAMILY. This is a poetic, ambiguous word—at times standing for “driftwoody” (Ambrox™), at times for “resinous, balsamic, leathery, labdanumy” (such as Labdanum resins), at times for molecules like Amber Xtreme™ (which are neither driftwoody nor labdanumy, but rather “Cedarwoody” or “Smoldering”—see below). Ambery has also been used to describe a combination of vanilla, coumarin or heliotropin, benzoin, and labdanum: we have dedicated the term “Ambery Sweet” as a DESCRIPTOR to describe this specific pattern.
- “Smoldering” (Feu Couvant, Schwelend, etc.) was created as a SUBFAMILY under the Woody GRAND FAMILY, for scents evoking heat—either “there is heat,” or “there was heat.” This includes notes of hot metal or hot wax (like in Habanolide), smoky-but-not-burnt notes, and tarmacky/asphalty notes (like in Ambrocenide, Norlimbanol, Timberol, Amber Xtreme™).