Basenotes is a United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

-based online fragrance resource which includes a fragrance database, message boards and editorial. The site was launched in August 2000 by Grant Osborne as an information site for men's fragrance and grooming. In 2004, the site expanded to include feminine fragrances.

The Basenotes Fragrance Directory

The Basenotes Fragrance Directory contains over 11,000 fragrances and over 30,000 fragrance reviews by the site's visitors. Users of the site can search for fragrances by name, house, year of launch, gender, notes (ingredients), perfumer

Perfumer

A perfumer is a term used for an expert on creating perfume compositions, sometimes referred to affectionately as a Nose due to their fine sense of smell and skill in producing olfactory compositions...

 or bottle designer. Visitors to the site can submit information to be included in the directory.

The consumer reviews on the site have been described as "admirably prosaic" by Alexis Petridis in The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

.

The Basenotes community

Basenotes has a lively fragrance discussion board, described by the New York Times as "the rialto for perfume talk", where registered members can discuss fragrances and trade fragrances in the Basenotes Marketplace.

The Basenotes Fragrance Awards

Each year Basenotes asks visitors to the site to vote for their favorite fragrances that year. Regular winners include Old Spice

Old Spice

Old Spice is a prominent American brand of male grooming products. It is manufactured by Procter & Gamble, which acquired the brand in 1990 from the Shulton Company.-History:...

, Shalimar

Shalimar (perfume)

Shalimar is a women’s fragrance originally created by Jacques Guerlain in 1921 as a classic soft amber parfum, and currently produced by Guerlain.-History:...

, Vetiver

Vetiver

Chrysopogon zizanioides, commonly known as vetiver , is a perennial grass of the Poaceae family, native to India. In western and northern India, it is popularly known as khus. Vetiver can grow up to 1.5 metres high and form clumps as wide. The stems are tall and the leaves are long, thin, and...

 de Guerlain

Guerlain

Guerlain is a French perfume house, among the oldest in the world. It has a large and loyal customer following, and is held in high esteem in the perfume industry...

, Chanel No.5, YSL M7

M7 fragrance

M7 is a men's fragrance by Yves Saint Laurent launched in 2002. It was created by the perfumers Alberto Morillas and Jacques Cavalier. It is the first male scent from YSL since Tom Ford took creative control.Top Notes: Bergamot, Mandarin, Rosemary....

, Green Irish Tweed and A*Men. There are also has categories for the best new fragrance and best celebrity fragrance.

Other features

The site also has regularly updated industry news, user blogs, articles and interviews with figures in the fragrance industry.

Awards and recognition

Basenotes has won five awards for its editorial content at The Canadian Fragrance Awards in 2007, 2008 and 2009. All three of these winning articles were written by Marian Bendeth, a regular contributor and fragrance expert.

In 2009, the website won a prize for Best Web Editorial at the Jasmine Awards for an article by the writer, Liz Upton. The following year, the same prize was won by the Basenotes writer, Walker Minton.

In August 2008, Basenotes was one of 50 websites recommended by Men's Vogue

Men's Vogue

Men's Vogue was a monthly men's magazine that covered fashion, design, art, culture, sports and technology. On October 30, 2008 Condé Nast announced that they intended to fold the magazine into Vogue proper as a bi-annual subscriber's supplement...

in a best-of-the-web round-up which also featured IMDB, Slashdot

Slashdot

Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...

, Boing Boing

Boing Boing

Boing Boing is a publishing entity, first established as a magazine, later becoming a group blog.-History:...

 and eLuxury.