Elderflower is one of the hardest smells to capture. The blossom is delicate and honeyed, and distillation loses most of what makes it recognisable. Analysis of the oil from dried flowers found a long list of esters, several never reported before, alongside linalool, geraniol and hotrienol.^[1] Hotrienol is the one that carries the elderflower character. There is no research on what the oil does, only on what is in it, so it is bought for the smell.