I don't think you will find any roses more fragrant than Double Delight. The truth of the matter for fragrance in SoCal is that we don't have the humidity that is needed to carry fragrance any distance at all away from the plant. I can't even describe Double Delight as having any "waft" to it. You puts your nose near it, you smell plenty. If not, then you don't. Or, if you bring the rose, cut, into the home, then the fragrance can fill a room as the blooms open.

It's really only in warm humid gardens that "wafting" occurs on any rose with regularity. But warm and humid brings diseases that we don't get much of, either, like blackspot. So, it's a tradeoff.

Kathy

I think you simply need to do more research (including in person) and choose more fragrant roses. Several of the roses you mention have mild to no fragrance. There are tons of ultra fragrant roses out there. Double Delight is a pretty darned fragrant rose, but there are many others that are equal or greater in fragrance. I gravitate towards fragrant HTs and FLs. I live in Goleta (next to Santa Barbara), which is a coastal Calif environment. I'm 1.5 miles from the coast as the crow flies. I could easily make a list of 50-100 very fragrant HTs and FLs that I grow. I have ~200 roses in my front yard, and my neighbors say they can smell them as a whole from the street. OTOH, if Mr. Lincoln and Secret have no fragrance for you, you might have some weird issues in your yard. Keep searching... they're definitely out there!

Susan

Some spots in the garden are better than others for fragrance- The early morning sun seems to bring out the best in my roses. The same roses in full afternoon sun don't have the same richness. In my garden, I have these in the best "fragrance spots"
Chrysler Imperial
Pink Peace
Starlight (Lagerfeld)
Sterling Silver (florists form from Vintage)
Memorial Day
Scentsation
Lemon Spice
Perfume Perfection
Rouge Royale
Abraham Darby
Huntington Rose
Pope John Paul II
Souvenir M.
Eternal Flame
Maria Callas
Frederic Mistral
Madame Issac P.
Jude the Obscure
Sonia Rykiel
I love any roses with damask or citrus or fruit fragrance.

I can't smell the TEA scented roses at all. I have a huge Sombreuil and can't smell a thing! EVER. Also the roses that they say have tea scents like peace I can't detect anything on. Love Potion planted at Sherman library and gardens in Corona del Mar near the ocean has a powerful sweet scent. Sometimes I won't smell anything on my roses until the day heats up. I like the myrrh scented Austins better in a little shade. I feel that the full sun makes the fragrance very strong like narcissus flowers. I have never smelt the "honeysuckle" fragrance on New Zealand or Full Sail. But I grow them anyway for the fabulous flowers. I never had any fragrance waft through my yard except my Sweet Olive tree and its fun to see people trying to guess where that wonderful perfume is coming from as they walk by.

I can't smell much from my Double Delight, but just behind it I have a Bronze Star HT. Now that rose I can smell from five feet away. The PETALS smell good!

I also get a good wafting scent in early spring from my huge Fortuniana/White Banks rose combo. That may be from sheer number of flowers open at once. But I agree that the lack of humidity may play a role in keeping scent from wafting much.

Renee

I will join the posters above to tell you that it may not be the roses, but instead its you. I, too, have bought all the "powerful scent" roses. Some give me nothing, some a little but none are powerful.

The rose I can smell the most is my Rugosa, Rootesmere.

Other plants produce a powerful scent to me including Korean Spice Viburnum, Lilac and Butterfly Bush. I'm just not that sensitive to rose fragrances.

A good friend who is a very keen rosarian and well known in Southern California rose societies and circles, lives not far from me. To my nose, Cardinal Hume is powerfully fragrant of "Red Hots", the spicy cinnamon fragrance. The same flower, from my nose to his, and he smells nothing. No, I didn't smell it all out, he isn't sensitive to the scent in that rose.

Renae's being able to smell the Fortuniana/Banksia combo in her garden from great distances is another example. I have long read of the powerful violet scent of the Banksias, as if that is something sweet. There are a few Pansies (mostly yellow and apricot) and some Violas which have spicy scents to my nose, but most have the same scent as the plants, which is very bitter and "hard green" to my nose. Amazingly, that's exactly what Banksia and Fortuniana smell like to me, too. It's FAR from a pleasant scent.

There is no maybe to it, humidity and temperature are vital for the expression and carrying of any scent. The oils and alcohols which make scent can either express themselves or not; evaporate immediately or linger. I know many have noticed some days, you put on your cologne and smell it all day, while other days, ten minutes after applying it, it's gone. Too hot or dry and they evaporate quickly. Too cold or wet and they may not evaporate sufficiently for us to detect them. Windy conditions can fully blow them away before they reach the concentrations you can smell.

Your best bet for determining which roses YOU can smell well is to visit all the public gardens close enough to you and stuff your nose in all of them. Hit every other garden you can manage and shop all the NURSERIES which carry decent selections of them. If you smell the same rose in several different locations, chances are you should be able to smell it at home. Kim

In Coastal Ventura County, the most fragrant roses we grow are:
Grandmother's Hat,
Secret Garden Musk Climber,
Noisettes as a class
Mel's Heritage, from the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden,
Austin's Golden Celebration
Austin's The Dark Lady,
Hybrid Musks as a class
Cramoisi Superieur (fragrance rare in a China)
Excellenz von Schubert
Reine des Violettes
Yolande de Aragon
La Reine is exquisitely fragrant, but she rusts here.

Jeri, Coastal Ventura Co., SoCal
Heritage Roses Group

No fragrance on Secret!!! Wow, mine fills the driveway to greet any newcomers. Are you testing freshly opened flowers in the morning? That's a better time in our conditions. Another suggestion would be to take advantage of your local public gardens to make sure it really is fragrant for you.

Some good smelling roses in my little Zone 10 garden:
Bonica
Distant Drums
Wm. Shakespeare 2000
Pope John Paul II
Sweetness
Pretty Jessica
Ebb Tide
Mary Rose
Buff Beauty (sweet & wafting in its Spring bloom)

I've just ordered a few that I have heard good things about but won't comment until I experience them for myself.

Shame on me for forgetting La Reine! She's one of my best perfume roses. I take an open blossom and sprinkle spring water in it. Then I wait 20 minutes and shake out the perfumed water into a bowl. That's how much perfume is in there. If we drink the water, we can experience the perfume differently. It's hard to describe, but it's like smelling the fragrance of wine as you hold it in your mouth. Best of all, I love to splash the water on my face right from the rose. Talk about luxury! Madame Issac P.'s great to make rose scented water with as well. My mom likes Double delight water and my sister prefers Pink Peace.

If you guys love fragrance so much, why don't you purchase yourself a perfume instead? My sister gave my mother an Estee Lauder perfume called, 'Bloom' and she loved it and I love the smell too!
Growing roses can be so frustrating with problems such as mites, mildew, black spots, thrips, balling, poor bloomers etc.
Going back to the topic, I've been growing roses for 4-5 years. I do remember that David Austin, 'Heritage' wafts more than the roses I grow now.

I have a local friend who has a ten acre garden of anything blue, anything variegated and anything crested. He jokes, but it's true, that he carries a pot of Ralph Moore's Chick-a-Dee under his nose as he walks around his garden. That way, EVERYTHING in the garden smells sweet!

Here is a link that might be useful: Chick-a-Dee on HMF

Mljan, many of the roses I see listed above have no or very mild fragrances to me.

However, I do grow (in coastal No Cal - zone 9, probably not that different from your area) two roses which are incredibly fragrant with what I can only call the "real rose" fragrance that I remember from my childhood:

Crimson Glory: old HT (I think the 1920s) - I have the climbing version. It is dark, dark, red and repeats all year (it has lots of buds on it as we speak).

Sutter's Gold: HT from I think the 1950s. It is a clear yellow, with outer guard petals that are pinkish. Amazing fragrance. Individual blooms don't last long, but it puts out many many of them on long stems - they last much longer in a vase indoors.

Jackie

Ok, well call me the Good News / Bad News girl.

Good News: the most fragrant rose that I have ever smelled is Color Magic (an HT). I planted one by my former back door and was so amazed that I planted two more. Magnificent wafts of fragrance as soon as I opened the door ~20' away, and that's with avg. coastal SoCal humidity, not Florida. YMMV, but I also loved the GIANT, mutable blooms which, even when cut fully open last a week in the house. ONE bloom will *completely* fill a LARGE room with sweet, sweet fragrance.

Bad News: It could bloom more (or I could fertilize more). BUT, more important, it really would have done better for me with regular spray for mildew. Rust is not that big a deal, plant-wise, but in my experience, mildew will debilitate and kill it over time. It's a bloody shame, as Suzy would say. If you spray and have a cutting bed, this is a keeper.

More Bad News: You will need to cross-reference mildew susceptibility for the fragrance suggestions above if you do not spray regularly. In particular,

Double Delight: 2+ mildew; 4+ rust
Rouge Royale: 4+ mildew even in 9% humidity in SoCal Mtns, don't bother
Freddy Mistral, Sonia Rykiel: lovely but gone because I didn't spray
Fragrant Cloud (and most anything orange) & Tiffany: 4+ mildew

Good News: GramHat & Golden Celebration are bullet proof and I could not recommend them more. GramHat is pink, floppy and old-fashioned in fragrance and form, while GC, to me, is such a happy looking bush in bloom, no doubt due to my reaction to yellow, and also has very good fragrance and will try to fill a room. Blooms will blow faster, but it's a great repeater in this area.

Good News: Anything Jeri recommends. Seriously.

Good Hunting!

Thanks, all, for your replies and suggestions. I'm not expecting a rose perfume to waft, really I'm not. I'm perfectly happy to walk around poking my nose into blooms, since I'd be inspecting them, anyway. It could be that I'm unable to detect some scents, something I hadn't really considered.
A few of the recommendations I have tried in my garden and did like the scent, so I'm not blind to all scents, but the plants were susceptible to rust or mildew, and I don't like to spray much. Plus I'm lazy. But there are several more that look very interesting and I will investigate. Thank you.
A public garden would be a great resource. I'll have to check around.

I grow Secret and while I really admire its scent, it is not particularly powerful to my nose. Same with Sheila's Perfume.

One rose I have not seen mentioned is a close relative of Mister Lincoln and Chrysler Imperial (which both have strong scents): Oklahoma

Double Delight, of course, has been mentioned many times already. Of the roses I grow, the only other one with a strong scent is Sterling Silver. Memorial Day gets a lot of accolades.

Here in SoCal, I recommend you visit Descanso Gardens and the Huntington Library if you want to sniff a bunch of different roses. There are other gardens, of course, like the LA Arboretum, Exposition Park, Rose Hills and South Coast Botanical Garden but those two are my favorites!

this is helpful.. thanks!! good stuff!! cheers!

I'll second Jude the Obscure. It's totally my favorite.

and yes, totally go to Descanso and Huntington Library. Descanso, in full bloom, is ridiculous in how many roses it has, it's not to be missed. Take your notebook and jot down which ones steal your heart, and which ones are disappointing.