Intensely sweet, medicinal wintergreen — dominated by methyl salicylate, giving a familiar candy-like minty character with a cooling, almost antiseptic edge. Rooty, slightly balsamic undertone develops with time.AI · claude-opus-4-7
Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin, page 399.
Wintergreen oil is a pale yellow to yellowish or pinkish colored liquid.
Wintergreen oil has an intensely sweet-aromatic odor and flavor, often displaying a peculiar creamy-fruity topnote and a sweet-woody dryout which may have a tarlike note in poorly distilled oils.
Methyl salicylate is useful in perfumery where traces of this powerful odorant can add natural notes to ylang-ylang, tuberose, narcissus, lily, gardenia, etc. and it is used frequently in fougéres and other forest notes.
The suggested use level in finished flavored goods is about 0.20 to 0.50 mg%.
The oil is derived by water distillation of the leaves of Gaultheria procumbens, a small plant of the heather family. Prior to distillation, the leaves are exposed to enzymatic action in warm water.