There, in Your Drink, a Drop of Perfume IF you think perfume's only place is behind the wrist or ear, take another sniff at that drink you just ordered. Scents are starting to show up in martinis, margaritas and much fancier concoctions, thanks in large part to Mandy Aftel, a former psychotherapist who now makes edible and potable perfumes. Her vials of essences sit behind the bars at high-profile restaurants around the country, as well as at New York City cocktail temples like PDT, Pegu Club and Booker and Dax at Momofuku Ssam Bar. Many bartenders believe the scents add one more dimension to the multisensory experience of a good drink. Even purist New York mixologists like Audrey Saunders and Jim Meehan, who say they would never reach for any ingredient that was synthetic or stale, are pouring Ms. Aftel's products into their potions. After all, the powerful aromas and tastes are drawn from the botanical world and not from the flavor and fragrance suitcase. Ms. Aftel, 64, lives in Berkeley, Calif., in the shadow of Chez Panisse, with her husband, cat and that essential tool kit, her perfume organ: an arched, multitiered shelving unit that holds a collection of 600 scents culled from flowers, spices, grasses, barks and resins. These expensive distillations, which she sources from around the world, are the sensitive components in her line of natural perfumes, Aftelier. In 2011, her creations were nominated for FiFi awards, the Oscars of the perfume industry. Ms. Aftel said she has never experimented with the artificial ingredients that dominate the scent and flavor industries. "It is the synthetic that stinks up the elevator," she said. I am not interested in scents that have that kind of staying power. A natural perfume costs more and disappears quickly, but while it lasts it's extremely beautiful. She began using her scents as accents to food after being introduced to Daniel Patterson, the chef and owner of Coi restaurant in San Francisco. Together they wrote the 2004 cookbook "Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Foods and Fragrance." And when other chefs around the country, including Dan Barber and José Andrés, showed interest, she assembled a collection of 45 edible potions, 6 of which are now marketed as Aftelier Chef's Essences by Williams-Sonoma. They are $17 to $19 each, in five-milliliter bottles (about 150 drops). The leap to the cocktail bar came by chance. Ms. Saunders, the mixologist who did much to start the current hipster cocktail culture, came across "Aroma," then sought out Ms. Aftel's earlier book "Essence and Alchemy." "I knew this could help me take the tinctures I made for Pegu Club to the next level," Ms. Saunders said. She traveled to Berkeley twice to train with Ms. Aftel. Ms. Saunders now drops essences onto sugar cubes and drips them into atomizers, which allows her to spray the empty bowl of the glass or the cocktail itself, depending on where she wants the flavor to hit. After this year's James Beard awards presentation, bartenders from Pegu Club made cocktails for the attendees. Like a Bloomingdale's model spraying a scent strip, each mixologist spritzed bay leaves with the scent of cacao, and orchids with intoxicating jasmine, and floated these atop cocktails, resulting in heady bouquets. But when using scents for flavor, why use a distillation of something as common as black pepper or ginger, when you can reach for a grinder, grater or muddler? "The essences reveal a floral back note," Ms. Aftel explained, "which you don't get with the original material." For Mr. Meehan, the owner of PDT in the East Village, the essences also help him achieve his ideal: a clear cocktail. He was originally introduced to the essences by Ms. Saunders, and in his recently published "PDT Cocktail Book," he has included them in several drinks. He accents his Gold Coast cocktail with the Aftelier Madagascar black pepper. "These essences are intense," he said. So I dilute 10 drops into a half-ounce of neutral grain spirit. He offered a whiff. The pepper aroma was earthy, like pencil lead, and so intense it was a little shocking. "I could never do this with actual pepper," he said. Who wants pepper between the teeth? I don't like food, other than an olive, in my drink. Handed the Makrud Lime Leaf essence, he said, "O.K., let's play." Mr. Meehan grabbed an atomizer and filled it with vodka, then added 10 drops of the essence. Into a shaker filled with ice, he stirred 2 ounces of Masumi Arabashiri sake (a spring-flowerlike junmai) with 1 ounce of herbal Zubrowka vodka. He strained the liquid into a glass and misted the top with the essence. He sipped, then frowned. "If we're going to stay with the bitterness of the Zubrowka, we need something slightly sweet," he said. Trying to avoid the usual fix, simple syrup, he added a bar spoon of almondy, clovey Velvet Falernum liqueur. He needed to fix something else. In his first stab at the cocktail, Mr. Meehan thought that the strong attack of the lime leaf, the top note, was too fierce. His intuition led him to atomize the glass first with the powerful fragrance before pouring. The result was alchemy. What was initially a top note was now a bottom, and the hint of the lime leaf not only added a snap of acidity but also bolstered the drink's structure. Ms. Aftel said it did not take much to make a big change. "On the skin the natural scents disappear quickly," she said, "but in food or drink, one drop can also make a drink or a dish pop. It's like magic.