How to build a perfume tracker
Newsletter #22: let's talk fragrance data (+ downloadable template)
For this week’s newsletter we’re going to talk all things fragrance data and how I track perfume.
Perfume as a hobby is a very unstructured thing. To my knowledge there is no universally accepted way for sourcing, tracking, reviewing, or analyzing perfume the way there is for wine or food. This means that you’re on your own to build a system or methodology to keep track of a consumer category that only gets bigger and bigger every year.
There is power in building your own data sets for any part of your life - tracking what you eat or where you go - to spot patterns and give your better insight into your own behaviour. But if I am honest, the main reason I list out every perfume that I smell is so that I can remember that I smelled it.
There are places online to help you do this. Fragrantica is probably the most popular, and for more casual perfume lovers will suit all their needs. But the deeper you go into the hobby, the more frustrated you will get with off the shelf log-and-review sites like Basenotes, Parfumo, and the rest. The value they provide is immense but there’s no database of perfume that I have seen that captures absolutely all of the things that I smell: small batch and indie perfumes aren’t always captured on these sites. I’m a firm believer in a single source of truth: if I can’t see all the perfumes I’m smelling in one place, that is not fit for my purpose.
The only other option is to go DIY. This is why, many years ago, I started building The Perfume Spreadsheet.
The Spreadsheet is my version of those diaries Da Vinci used to scribble in writing you have to read with a mirror. It’s a bible built to help me keep track of what I’ve smelled, what I thought, and when I wore perfume. I use it to:
log perfumes when I first smell then and update with further resniffs
track my To-Sniff list (like a TBR) and keep on top of new releases on my radar
log what perfume I wear each and every day
track my To-Buy list and maintain my collection
track my natural materials collection and to-buy
track any ‘challenges’ or lists (eg. 5 Stars in the Perfume Guide) that I want to smell, and
pull simple, streamlined analytics and visualization on tracking data.
In this newsletter I’m going to map out my process for the Tried and Tested tab in my spreadsheet. I’ll take you through the process step by step. At the bottom of the post there’s a downloadable template if you’d like to try the system too.
Some notes before we get stuck in:
My day job is in information and data and I have a background in research, so I love this kind of thing - but I know it is not the system for everyone!
I’m a Google Sheets person and that’s where my spreadsheet lives.1
I also like colours - a lot - so if that is also not your thing keep in mind (or change your screen to grayscale!)
My system is automated in places (eg. auto conditional formatting) but is overall quite a manual process. And it’s meant to be. This isn’t my job, it’s my passion, and I want to enjoy the work of logging and tracking the perfumes I smell. That’s where the joy is found.
How I Track Perfume
Step 1: Go Sniff Something
This one’s pretty straightforward. In store, buying a sample, a bottle from your own collection or poking through your friend’s when you’re over at theirs: spray a perfume or something scented.
I always keep a handful of blotters, a notebook, and a pen in my bag for sniffing in the wild. Short or card shaped blotters can be kept in a wallet or purse.
It’s usually best to spray on a blotter or equivalent before you spray on skin.2
If no blotters are available, any of the following will suffice: a torn piece of paper, Post-Its, cotton balls, rolled up tissue, receipts if you don’t care about the alcohol in the perfume bleeding the laser print, your arm if all else fails.
Step 2: Write The Name Down
You will forget the name of this perfume immediately. Write it down. Use dry ink because wet will bleed.
If you don’t know the perfume’s name or can’t see it on the bottle, write down enough information that you can look it up later. (An example of my own: ‘Narciso R square bottle strange creamsicle colour?’ Tell me if that’s not accurate.)
This is especially important if you are smelling many perfumes at once, or in one trip. Keep the blotters as separated as possible until the alcohol dries off and write the names down on the blotters as you go. You will thank me later.
Step 3: Capture Initial Thoughts
As soon as possible, capture your initial thoughts and feelings about the perfume.
The format is your preference: video, voice note to your friend, notes app on your phone. Structure doesn’t matter - just note about your impressions and whatever’s running through your head as you smell.
If I’m out and about sniffing I will usually clock my first impressions of the blotter and then within the next hour or two go to a cafe, order a coffee, and write my first thoughts down in a notebook.3
See below my current notebook with initial thoughts tracking from a recent Sydney trip:
For at home sampling or daily wears, I usually track in a diary or journal4 as below:
I try to note my thoughts at first spray, an hour in, and at the drydown.
Step 4: Log It
This is the fun part. You have your impressions of the perfume and it’s time to log it with some base information about the perfume itself.
If you’re using something like fragrantica and parfumo, they will do this part for you. If not, you’ll have to research these elements.
In my spreadsheet I track the following categories:
Name and House
Category (eg designer, niche, celebrity, indie)
Strength (EDT, EDP, Parfum)
Fragrance Family
Year of release
Price
My personal rating (0 - 10)
My thoughts/review
Notes listed
If I have a bottle in my collection
The categories are picklisted where possible to ensure consistency.
Choose the fields that are relevant to you. This is a space for you to reference and should only contain information that you find valuable. 5
Enjoy the hunt to find information about your perfumes! There’s a lot of fun to be had browsing through brand sites and reading hilarious perfume descriptions and wild fantasy note pyramids.
Try to explore further than your go-to sites and databases, especially for vintage and indie scents.
When you’ve filled in your details, your sheet will look something like this:
The more you add to your spreadsheet, the more valuable it will become.
I most often keep my spreadsheet sorted A-Z by rating. But I’ll often jump in there and sort by house or rating and then family for quick cross comparatives, article ideas, or to remind myself if I have smelled a perfume or flanker in the past.
Step 5: Rinse and Repeat
Log new perfumes as you smell them and update entries as you resniff.
Try to log perfumes quickly so they don’t build up into a huge backlog6 .
What’s Missing?
My system works for me but it’s also always a work in progress. I’m always looking for areas to improve or gaps to fill - here are a few.
Why no perfumer category?
The long and short of it is that I had one but this information is often not published or shared by houses, so the field was often empty and that really, really annoyed me. I would love to add the field but the Spreadsheet is pretty deep now…. maybe one day.
Why no bottle images?
While I’m clearly not afraid to create administrative work for myself, saving and uploading or hotlinking images and ensuring they’re a consistent size and format is where I draw the line. This does make me sad as bottle and presentation are such an important part of the perfume experience, but sometimes you have to know your limits.
If bottle visualisation is key for you, this is the one area where I would recommend something like fragrantica or parfumo. Their ‘bottle shelf’ options are the best solution for this. See my (not well updated, I’m afraid) test shelf below:
How do you manage reformulations and re-releases?
Inconsistently, I’m afraid. Sometimes I will go into my original review and provide an update, and sometimes I’ll create a new line and then differentiate the two scents by year of release. This is something I need to improve on as I enter perfumes.
I’m also not capturing flanker relationships as well as I’d like to, but see above re: massive data gaps and how that annoys me as to why I haven’t added that as a column!
Wouldn’t AI make this all so m-
No. Go away.
Explore The Spreadsheet
I’ve pulled an extract from my perfume spreadsheet into a data visualization below. Sort, navigate, and interrogate as you please!
I hope that one day there will be a really brilliant custom tool to organise and obsess over perfume data for sniffers and creators to use. But until then, if you have a weird and wonderful way of tracking perfume, please tell me about it! A perfume data method is almost as exciting to me as a perfume bottle collection tour.
If you’d like to create your own spreadsheet, I’ve created a template based on my Tried and Tested and Day Tracker tabs which you can download here:
The Perfume Spreadsheet - Template Download
If perfume is your hobby as it is mine, take the time to build a system that works for you and that is fun. Because perfume should be fun!
It’s 2025, everyone: if you’re not spending time doing the things you love, what is the point? ▣
I’d love to explore an alternate home for The Spreadsheet in a knowledge management platform like Notion, but you know…. time, etc.
On blotters: when you’re next at a high end store, nick a bunk of their high quality cardstock blotters. They won’t care, and you’ll soon grow a stash you can keep in your bag at all times. Otherwise you can order cheap blotters in 100/200pcks from the usual places online, which I do as well. If you’re in Australia, Mecca has the best blotters - go grab some.
My preferred notebook is a Delfonics Rollbahn spiral because I love the buttery yellow, thick paper. I have them in a bunch of different sizes but the picture is the large in navy. Muji is a good, cheap alternative that I also keep well stocked. I write with Pilot Dr Grip pens and Zebra Mildliners. Yes, I am also a stationery person.
Pictured is a Hobonichi Techo Cousin.
I’m pretty happy with my categories, but have considered adding one more - a Date Smelled column. I think it might be valuable to note when I first encountered a perfume in the future.
Something I have absolutely, definitely, never ever done before….
Obsessed with this. Thank you for sharing! I would definitely add date smelled, weather that day (because climate and season massively affects first impressions and scent evolution for me), and where I smelled it (more and more I find that if it’s a store, that can have a major influence on the experience — especially if it’s cramped, noisy or unwelcoming). In recent times I’ve been re-sampling scents I once rejected or slowly learning new notes and this date/season/context data is helpful in identifying what changed when with my nose, my outlook, and my relationship with perfume as an art form.
Would love to see an update on your process in the future and to hear about its evolution.
Great system. I esp. like the family category. It usually comes out in the desc. field. Do you use a standardized list for this (Edwards, Art and olfaction, Aftel) or your own? I go lighter and use sheets with a form app (looks like a survey) on my phone. My fileds are: Name, House, concentration, Date of release, short desc. (a la Turin), long desc., stars to 5, todays date, and will be adding perfumer soon.