ScentTrek

ScentTrek is a proprietary headspace-technology system developed by the flavor-and-fragrance company Givaudan. The device itself weighs only a few kilograms and is built to travel: rather than bringing a cutting or a potted specimen back into a lab, perfumers carry ScentTrek to wherever the source plant actually grows and seal the dome around a living branch without harming it. Air drawn through the enclosure passes across 12 filter cartridges that trap the volatile molecules the plant releases, and the equipment is sensitive enough to detect compounds present in quantities as small as a billionth of a gram.

What sets ScentTrek apart from earlier headspace methods is repetition over time. Instead of a single capture window, the device takes a fresh reading every 2 hours across a full 24-hour cycle, building a timeline of how the plant's scent shifts between morning, midday sun, and night. Back in the lab, the resulting data is run through gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to identify each compound, and perfumers use that molecular map to reconstruct an approximation of the scent using available aromachemicals and natural materials, since the captured air itself can't be bottled directly.

ScentTrek is not exclusive to any single fragrance house. Givaudan licenses it to whichever brand is paying, and every major flavor-and-fragrance manufacturer markets its own version of the same underlying idea under a different name: Takasago's is called Aromascope, Mane's is Jungle Essence, and Firmenich's is NaturePrint. When a launch's marketing copy references a proprietary scent-capture technology, it's usually one of these four systems. Tom Ford used ScentTrek to capture a Silver Juniper accord growing in the Chisos Mountains for the 2026 Ombré Leather Reserve, one of the more recent examples of the technology reaching a mainstream designer release rather than staying confined to niche or industry use.