You have heard of the Elements of Style, I think we are due for a tour around the Elements of Scent. We have not evolved a scent vocabulary or grammar yet, and I think that is a pity. This might be because everyone smells things in a different way, or that scent is not as easily classified as color is. But I suspect that no one really tried to make scent into a logical progression of things in an orderly way, like the Periodic Table of the Elements based on atomic weight.
There are a lot of ways we could approach this task: by sweet to tart, from natural to man-made, from old to new. I think that doing it as a family might be a good way to approach this initially. I don’t mean to be weighty about it, and there is no chemistry test you are going to have to take at the end of it, but let’s take a trip through the scent neigborhood and see what is where. It might surprise you and you might find out a thing or two. I am going to follow the Possets “Scent By Note” list on my website. And the first one of the families is: Aquatics. Stay tuned, this is going to get interesting.