Civet

Neat: faecal, fetid, harsh. Highly diluted: warm, skin-like, dark honey, lending a white-floral glow beside jasmine and tuberose. Extremely tenacious.

Civet is not named in the index of the IFRA Standards, 51st Amendment. In the United States civet appears in the GRAS list at 21 CFR 182.50.

The material comes from caged civets, mainly in Ethiopia, by periodic scraping of the gland secretion. Animal welfare organisations have published reports on the husbandry. CITES status of the species should be checked for each exporting country.

Store dark, sealed and cool.

The African civet has a gland between the anus and the genitals. The secretion is a paste, yellow at first and darkening in air. Ethiopia was the main exporter through the 20th century. The paste was packed in horns or jars and sold by weight.

The main odorant is civetone, a seventeen-membered ring ketone. Leopold Ruzicka published the macrocyclic structures of civetone and muscone in 1926. The finding opened the way to synthetic macrocyclic musks. Ruzicka received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, largely for related work on terpenes and large rings.

In classical perfumery civet was used in tiny amounts to warm white florals and bind a base. Most producers now use synthetic civetone and reconstitutions.

Perfumery civet is not the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) associated with civet coffee. The two belong to different genera and are separate sources.

Civet tinctures are usually made at low strength and aged for several months before use. Civet absolute is a brown paste soluble in ethanol. At trace level civet makes white floral notes carry further and last longer without showing as a separate odour.