Cotswold Perfumery

[blantyre]

I took a tour of the Cotwold Perfumery today. Very enjoyable. They buy large quantities of EOs, fragrance oils, and extractions. More expensive EOs are analyzed with a gas chromatograph to verify purity - at 100k+/kg for some oils, cutting occurs. Their own line up of products is quite small - perhaps a dozen fragances. Ornaments and jewelery outnumber perfumes in their shop.

Their major activity is developing blends for clients and then making them - minimum order 25 kg. They seem to have done most things from royal requests to cat litter deoderizser scent. The "factory" tour it was clear that they make all the C&S line - lots of bottles of Neroli and #88 all wrapped up ready for shipping to London. Not surprising since John Stephen of Cotswold designed much of the C&S range.

The scent in the air in the blending room was almost overpowering - a mix of many EOs that get decanted in near-gallon quantities on a routine basis.

 

[The Knize]

They have an interesting web site, too. I think they give scentmaking lessons. I am a big fan of C&S scents and would love to hear what John Stephen has to say about scentmaking! Thanks for the report!

 

[rickboone1]

What is their website?

 

[The Knize]

http://www.cotswold-perfumery.co.uk/index.html

 

[Handy]

Very jealous of your tour. Sounds like it was a great experience. I have been wanting to buy Cotswold's Neroli for a long time but they do not ship to Canada.

 

[galopede]

I lived in Bourton on the Water for many years - tourist central! Always used to nip in for the free samples...

My morris team will be dancing outside the Cotswold Perfumery this coming Saturday. Lots of punters to fleece of their spare cash to keep our team bank account in the black!

Gareth

Gareth

 

[Jim]

Rick,
Did you have a chance to sample anything?

The Oberon and the Neroli water are on my list to try, I was hoping for a report on these.

 

[WalterArcher]

The Cotswold Perfumery was announce that Buckingham Palace had selected “Pallas” over all the competition - a beautiful Jasmin perfume. The Cotswold Perfumery in Bourton on the Water under the guidance of perfumer John Stephen.John Stephen is the perfumer and owner of the Cotswold Perfumery.

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[Evbo]

I bought a bottle of their amber cologne & promptly sold it on the b/s/t. It was well made but just not to my taste.

 

[blantyre]

Rick,
Did you have a chance to sample anything?

The Oberon and the Neroli water are on my list to try, I was hoping for a report on these.

I did try the dip testers. After the tour, we had had a "nosefull" (in a good way) so I wasnt really much of a tester at that point. However I found that Neroli lived up to its name - plenty of Neroli topnotes - a bit similar to Pen's Castile- not really sure where it goes from there. Oberon was a piney green - elements of German bath additives if you know what I mean, maybe a bit Polo-ish - a nice rounded scent. Amber was a sweeter rendition than I like. Came close to picking up a 100 ML lavender but decide I should wait until I've tested a couple of other items on my to try list. Based on this very superficial review, I would estimate that the C&S line has some of John Stephen's better work. Maybe he doesn't want to compete too hard with his clients.

BTW - you can do a 1 or 2 day "make your own perfume" course for 250 UKpds. Might be fun!


As another poster observed Bourton is for tourists, but if you're a tourist then that's a plus in some ways. Unlike a lots of tourist places, the stuff is good quality and in some cases unique, so I would recommend a 1/2 day visit to anyone.

 

[Jim]

Thanks Rick.

 

[Sabre]

The Cotswold Perfumery was announce that Buckingham Palace had selected “Pallas” over all the competition - a beautiful Jasmin perfume. The Cotswold Perfumery in Bourton on the Water under the guidance of perfumer John Stephen.John Stephen is the perfumer and owner of the Cotswold Perfumery.

In 1992 .