The smell of headstones, wet soil and freshly-dug graves makes petrichor – the earthy scent emitted by raindrops on dry stone – a fitting olfactory note for Gothtober.
Petrichor may sound poetic, but it’s the acknowledged scientific word for the distinct odour produced when the oily substances absorbed by soil and stone are released by moisture after a dry spell. Two Australian chemists coined the term in 1964 by combining the Greek words for “stone” and “blood of the gods.”
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Geosmin is the naturally occurring molecule that gives rain and dirt their smell. We are highly sensitive to it: Humans can detect geosmin in the air at levels as low as five parts per trillion. Identifying the scent is a signal for survival: a storm is brewing. It is often accompanied by ozone, which carries the pungent smell of hot asphalt (there’s even a candle named for it: D.S. and Durga’s steaming Concrete After Lightning).
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In Sniff, a new book on the wide-ranging history of smells, olfactory historian Will Tullett devotes a chapter to petrichor. He traces evolving explanations for the peculiar scent, as well as shifting understandings of its rejuvenating powers. Philosopher Francis Bacon, Tullett writes, extolled the benefits of gardening because the smells of freshly turned earth “excellently refresh the spirits,” and ancient authors “suggested that a distaste for the scent of wet soil after rain indicated illness.”
Le Labo’s Baie 19, from 2019, is often cited as a reference in the category for its musky yet crisp ozonic notes of wet stone. More recent creations such as Zoologist’s Olm conjure evocative nature documentary imagery: Olm’s mildewy wet rock and iodine aroma is a riff on the habitat of limestone cave-dwelling salamanders. Matière Premiere’s Metal Lavender pairs the flinty mineral effect with powdery Provençal lavandin (lavender’s more camphorous cousin), which smells the way the brief, refreshingly cool damp of walking under a bridge on a sunny day feels.
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And then there’s CBCB Still, with its depths of cold, wet decay, by Chris Bull, a music producer turned self-taught independent perfumer. The atmospheric, rain-soaked petrichor of Still makes it one of CBCB’s most popular fragrances at home in Canada and in the U.S., where the brand has become a staff favourite at influential retailer Luckyscent.
Initially conceived with design firm Mason Studio for its installation, The Invisible Tide: Awakening Unseen Forces, at last year’s DesignTO Festival, Still was the olfactory component of an immersive, water-themed sensory experience.
Bull was surprised by the feedback and sales demand. “That was my version of being a kid and playing in the pond,” he said.
Still’s enigmatic, earthy-zinc aspects come courtesy of one of Bull’s favourite ingredients, 1-octen-3-one, which he described as a matsutake mushroom alcohol that smells like a sheet of iron. It’s subtly metallic, “like maybe there was a nail in the stream, or an old coin.”
In Sniff, Tullett notes that the smell of petrichor is not universal. The Icelandic word for the outdoor scent is útilykt. At Fischersund, the artisan perfumery founded by Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi and his family in Reykjavik, that airy, damp odour is translated by juxtaposing wet local blossoms and hot asphalt notes in a candle and scent.
Similarly, Cutting Rain by emerging niche Southeast Asian brand Rahasya takes inspiration from a practice dating back generations, wherein perfumers in northern India bottled the scent of earth by boiling clay soil after the first monsoon rain and distilled it with sandalwood as mitti attar.
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As Still makes its way in the world, Bull has noticed its varied geographic reception.
“My parents’ cottage in the Laurentians in the fall is very dark and wet,” the perfumer said of the memory that inspired the fragrance. “You’re always in raincoats and rain paints.”
Canadian perfume enthusiasts, who have been recommending the scent on #PerfumeTok to followers in New York and L.A., are met with the response that it’s not evocative of their petrichor.
“The Lower East Side’s is tied to a sweaty wet sidewalk smell – very different from Ontario swampy dead leaves sitting in a pool with mosquitoes about to bloom,” Bull said.
As part of its Cinematic Scent Archive, niche Austin brand Xyrena makes the official Jurassic Park fragrance (its tongue-in-cheek tagline: “A perfume 65 million years in the making”). The 1990s VHS-themed packaging belies a prehistoric scent, which opens with a heady dose of petrichor that dries down to notes that evoke wet soil and fossilized amber.
Perhaps above anything, petrichor emphasizes our connection to life’s cycles: shifting seasons, life and death, the passage of time.
Our top picks
CBCB Still
$195/50ml at Mr. Derk in Edmonton, Easy Tiger and Home44 in Toronto
Clay by Perfumer H
$273/50ml at Perfumer H
Le Labo Baie 19
$136/15ml at Le Labo
Le Sel d’Issey Parfum
$185/100ml at Shoppers Drug Mart and London Drugs
Matière Premiere Metal Lavender
$320/50ml at Holt Renfrew
Xyrena Jurassic Park
$267/50ml at Xyrena