A supplier listed five jasmines. They aren't five origins

Someone was overwhelmed by a supplier's jasmine options and listed five names asking which was best. Nobody in the thread said the crucial thing: those five are not the same kind of product. The database holds 74 entries whose name contains 'jasmin', 52 with a supplier, and 9 whose occurrence field reads 'not found in nature'. Two product-line words work almost perfectly as labels: of the 28 supplier listings containing 'Floraline', not one maps to a real extract, and the same holds for the 52 containing 'Givco'. One commenter guessed Floraline was the grandiflorum version. It is a reconstitution.

Someone was about to place an order with a materials supplier and got stuck on jasmine:

"Was planning to make a purchase from BulkAroma but slightly overwhelmed by all their options! The jasmine options seem to have these: Sampaquita Givco, Jasmine 74, Jasmine Grandi, Jasmine Sambac ROBERTET, Jasmine Floraline ROBERTET. Does anyone have an idea for which are the best materials to get please?"

"Also wondering if the materials listed under 'Attar shop' can be used for perfumery?"

Thirteen replies. Some good advice, and nobody said the crucial thing: those five are not the same kind of product.

Two of them contain no flower.

The short version

The database holds 74 entries whose name contains jasmin, of which 52 have a supplier and 13 have ten or more. That person was not being timid — the category genuinely has 74 things in it.
Of those 74, 9 have an occurrence field that reads "not found in nature". That field is the fastest way to sort them.
Two product-line words work almost perfectly as labels. Of the 28 supplier listings containing Floraline, not one maps to a real extract (24 are reconstitutions, 4 are specialities). The 52 containing Givco behave the same way.
One commenter guessed "the Robertet floraline is the grandiflorum version". That is wrong. The database maps Jasmine floraline 62 and 73 to jasmin absolute replacer — a reconstitution. He thought he was choosing a species; he was choosing whether there is a flower in it.
The longevity gap is visible: real absolute 280-312 hours at 100%, reconstitution 72 hours.
Somebody said Robertet's materials are for candle making. Robertet has 1,018 supply records covering 684 materials in this database, and its jasmine listings say "for fragrance" in the product name.
Sambac versus grandiflorum is the right first cut, and one commenter got that right. The catch is that the same three molecules top both; what differs is the proportions (Bera et al. 2015).

About 9 minutes.

Seventy-four things called jasmine

Start by measuring the category. Database entries whose name contains jasmin:

	Entries
All	74
With at least one supplier	52
With ten or more suppliers	13

Being overwhelmed was not inexperience.

And those 74 mix at least six different kinds of thing:

Class	Example	Suppliers
Absolutes (real extracts)	jasmin absolute sambac	56
	jasmin absolute (from chassis)	46
	jasmin absolute india (from concrete)	34
Other extraction stages	jasmin concrete	21
	jasminum sambac flower oil CO2 extract	4
Specialities (supplier-compounded)	jasmin specialty	19
Reconstitutions (no flower)	jasmin absolute replacer	16
Finished compounds (for products)	jasmin fragrance	18
Single molecules named after it	jasmin cyclopentanone	19
	jasmin pyranol	17
Cosmetic ingredients	jasminum officinale flower water	3

The last two classes catch people out. jasmin cyclopentanone and jasmin pyranol are single aroma chemicals; the word jasmine is in the name because they smell like one facet of it, and they have nothing to do with the flower. The flower water entries are cosmetic ingredients rather than perfumery concentrates.

The fastest sort: read the occurrence field

Of those 74 entries, 9 have an occurrence field reading "not found in nature":

Suppliers	Name
19	jasmin cyclopentanone
19	jasmin specialty
17	jasmin pyranol
16	jasmin absolute replacer
7	jasminone
5	jasmin acetate
5	sambac jasmin specialty

A thing with "absolute" in its name whose occurrence field says it isn't found in nature. That combination is the whole answer: jasmin absolute replacer is a formula built to replace jasmine absolute, not jasmine absolute.

(We wrote last round about the occurrence field being wrong for veramoss. Here the field is used correctly: those really are compounded products. Same column, wrong once and right once, so keep reading the columns beside it.)

The uses field helps too. jasmin fragrance has a uses field reading "fragranced products of all types" rather than the "flavor and fragrance agents" that the absolutes carry. That is a finished compound, not something to formulate with.

Two product-line words, with no exceptions

This is the most practical part.

Of the poster's Jasmine Sambac ROBERTET and Jasmine Floraline ROBERTET, one commenter guessed:

"I assume the Robertet floraline is the grandiflorum version, but have not smelled it so can't say."

Wrong, and wrong in an instructive way. The database maps them like this:

Supplier listing	Maps to
Robertet｜Jasmin Sambac Absolute	jasmin absolute sambac
Robertet｜Jasmine Grandiflorum India Absolute (for fragrance)	jasmin absolute india (from concrete)
Robertet｜Jasmine floraline 62	jasmin absolute replacer
Robertet｜Jasmine floraline 73	jasmin absolute replacer
Robertet｜Sambac floraline 10	jasmin absolute sambac replacer

Floraline is not a species. It is a product line.

And it is consistent enough to use as a rule. Pulling every supplier listing whose product name contains floraline:

Floraline	Listings
Maps to a reconstitution	24
Maps to a speciality	4
Maps to a real extract	0

Twenty-eight listings, zero exceptions. Nor is it confined to jasmine — Civet floraline 54 maps to civet absolute replacer. It is the naming convention of an entire reconstitution line.

Givco behaves the same way. It is Givaudan's base numbering:

Givco	Listings
Speciality	33
Reconstitution	18
Other	1
Real extract	0

Fifty-two listings, again no exceptions. So the first item on that person's list, Sampaquita Givco, is also a compounded base — the database maps Sampaquita Givco 138 to sambac jasmin specialty, whose occurrence field reads "not found in nature".

Two of his five options are compounded products, and he was asking which is best.

That is not his fault. The names look perfectly parallel.

So what about sambac versus grandiflorum

One commenter gave the right first step:

"First, you should figure out what kind of jasmine you want - Sambac or Grandiflorum, this will narrow your options. Sambac - greener, fruitier, more indolic. Grandiflorum - airier, brighter, more floral."

That cut is correct, and it is subtler than it sounds.

Bera and colleagues used GC-MS in Natural Product Research in 2015 to analyse the headspace scent volatiles of four commercially cultivated Jasminum species: J. sambac, J. auriculatum, J. grandiflorum and J. multiflorum.

They found the scent volatile composition of these flowers predominantly enriched with both terpenoid and benzenoid compounds. The key sentences:

Linalool was the major monoterpene in all four species
(3E,6E)-α-farnesene was the major sesquiterpene in all four
Benzyl acetate was the most abundant benzenoid in all of them

Four species, the same three molecules at the top. Comparison of the volatile profiles indicated a variation in fragrance contents and types emitted from the four flowers.

So "sambac is greener, grandiflorum is airier" is a real difference, and it is not made of different molecules — it is the same set in different proportions. That has a direct consequence: you cannot turn grandiflorum into sambac by adding one characteristic molecule.

(We met benzyl acetate in the phenethyl alcohol piece: 317 of 954 formulas, the second most common material. It leads in the flower and it is a general-purpose material in formulas.)

How much is in one bottle of absolute

This answers "why can't I just buy the molecule".

Braun and colleagues analysed a Jasminum flexile flower absolute from southern India in Natural Product Communications in 2009, comparing it with three other commercially available Indian jasmine absolutes — J. sambac, J. officinale subsp. grandiflorum, and J. auriculatum.

They characterised 121 compounds in that absolute, with methyl linolate, benzyl salicylate, benzyl benzoate, (2E,6E)-farnesol and benzyl acetate as the main constituents.

Note benzyl salicylate and benzyl benzoate in that list.

Buy a bottle of jasmine absolute and you have bought salicylates too. Somebody spent a year chasing a salicylate drydown in the last piece, and if your formula holds a jasmine absolute, that thread is already in it.

The number 121 also explains why a reconstitution is a different animal. A reconstitution uses fifteen or twenty materials to approach the overall impression of those 121, rather than reproducing them.

Longevity: that question does have an answer

The poster followed up:

"Also I can't really find any information on the ROBERTET - is there any way to see longevity/etc? As that also plays a part in what I'd get"

The reply: "You don't usually see longevity etc specified for bases, but if you have a look at safety datasheets, you can look at the underlying ingredients and infer from that."

Good advice, and the database does carry the number at the class level:

	Substantivity
jasmin absolute (from chassis)	280 hours at 100%
jasmin absolute india (from concrete)	312 hours at 100%
jasmin absolute replacer	72 hours

Real absolute 280-312 hours, reconstitution 72. More than fourfold.

Handle that number carefully. It is a representative value for a class, not the specification of any one product, and reconstitutions vary a great deal between houses. It tells you these are not the same kind of thing; it does not tell you how long Floraline 73 lasts.

The question nobody answered: attars

The poster asked twice and nobody touched it.

An attar (or ittar) is traditionally a distillation product rather than an extract: flowers go into the still, and the receiver holds sandalwood oil, so the flower's volatiles are absorbed directly into it. The product is therefore sandalwood oil carrying a flower.

Three consequences for formulation:

It is mostly sandalwood. Buy a jasmine attar and your formula gains a sandalwood base that the name does not mention.
It arrives already diluted. The concentration is not a variable you control.
Traditionally it is worn directly, rather than used as a formulation material.

Can you formulate with it? Yes, if you treat it as "sandalwood plus jasmine" rather than as "jasmine". If your formula already has sandalwood in it, you are stacking two.

(The JASMIN 74 he asked about does not appear in the database, so I cannot classify that one.)

"Robertet are for candle making"

One line in the thread reads:

"I am certain that ROBERTET are for candle making."

Poster: "Oh wait really?"

The database disagrees. Robertet has 1,018 supply records covering 684 materials here. And its jasmine listings state the intended use in the product name itself:

Jasmine Grandiflorum India Absolute (for fragrance)

That is a naturals supplier, not a candle-compound house.

Worth separating out, because the line was delivered with real confidence and the poster nearly changed a decision on it. Which is exactly the pattern from the last piece: how certain a statement sounds carries no information about whether it is right.

One more unevidenced claim in the thread: "Don't buy from them. All their ingredients are diluted." Someone asked whether that came from personal experience, and got no reply. I cannot check it, so I record only that it was said.

Four checks before you order

Decide sambac or grandiflorum first. This halves the list, and it is the only decision here that is about smell.
Look for a product-line code in the name. When words like Floraline or Givco appear, you are looking at a compounded product. When unsure, look up what that code maps to on other materials.
Read the occurrence field or the safety datasheet. "Not found in nature", or an ingredient list full of single chemicals, means a reconstitution.
Check whether it is already diluted. Anything marked 10%, and every attar, is. That changes your formula arithmetic directly.

None of these four requires smelling anything and all can be done before you order. As for which one smells better, the thread had that right: you have to smell it yourself.

What this doesn't establish

I have smelled none of these. The whole piece compares database fields against papers, and no judgement here about which smells better is mine.

The "zero exceptions" for Floraline and Givco is zero within this database. Twenty-eight and fifty-two listings are not large numbers, and the mapping from supplier product names is an editorial judgement made by the database rather than a manufacturer's official classification. If some house ever named a pure extract Floraline, I would not see it here.

"Floraline is a reconstitution" means the database maps it to the jasmin absolute replacer entry. That entry is a class rather than a specification for that product. I have not seen a safety datasheet for Floraline 62 or 73.

The three substantivity figures are class-level representative values. 280, 312 and 72 come from database records for three classes, not from three measurements made in one experiment, so the ratio between them is not precise.

The Bera study measured headspace — what living flowers emit — not absolute. What a flower releases on the branch differs from what a solvent pulls out of it; extraction captures heavy constituents the flower never emits. I use that paper for the nature of inter-species difference, not for the composition of an absolute.

Braun's 121 compounds belong to the J. flexile absolute, not to sambac or grandiflorum. That paper compares three others against it, but the 121 is the subject's number alone.

The attar section has no paper behind it. I could not find suitable literature on PubMed, so that section states the common description of the traditional method, and much of what is sold as attar today is made other ways. Ask what the base is before you buy.

"Robertet has 1,018 supply records" describes this database's coverage, not market share or revenue. It refutes "only for candles" and cannot be used as a ranking.

References

P. Bera, J. N. Kotamreddy, T. Samanta, S. Maiti, A. Mitra, Inter-specific variation in headspace scent volatiles composition of four commercially cultivated jasmine flowers, Natural Product Research, 29(14), 1328-1335 (2015). PMID 25583067. doi:10.1080/14786419.2014.1000319

N. A. Braun, B. Kohlenberg, S. Sim, M. Meier, F. J. Hammerschmidt, Jasminum flexile flower absolute from India — a detailed comparison with three other jasmine absolutes, Natural Product Communications, 4(9), 1239-1250 (2009). PMID 19831037

A supplier listed five jasmines. They aren't five origins — two of them contain no flower