HotelChatter

The melangeur in residence is named Teresa Blackwell, and she is basically an aromatherapy or blending expert—we’re going to call it a “mixmaster”—whose job it is to come up with new scent concoctions to keep things smelling nice and tropical at the resort.

Teresa earned her aromatherapy certification through a California-based organic fragrance company called Ajne. Teresa says, “the certification included fundamentals, such as history, how to identify each note (there are over 500!) and the ingredients, the benefits of each note and how to blend the notes to create a harmonized fragrance.” Sounds like hard work.

Teresa mixes a fragrance for a spa guest after an hour-long consultation where she gauges the guest’s likes and dislikes, their ailments, and whether the scent is to be used for therapeutic or just sensuous purposes. She has each guest smell a variety of scents to capture their mood, and then narrows their profile down from 200 to five, and begins the blending process.

She uses many indigenous Hawaiian fragrances, and says that some of her favorites include puakenikeni, pikake, Hawaiian sandalwood, kewda, mock orange and tuberose. We love the idea of a custom-blended scent made just for us, especially one that captures the essence of the place its blended and our own experience in that place, but Teresa goes even further to say that, beyond the therapeutic aspects of aromatherapy, a blending expert “is like an artist who can convey concepts and moods through the fragrance compositions.” Now that would put us in a good mood.