Perfume Mini Reviews - Gourmands

In my recent care package from Su of My Perfume Diaries there were so many gorgeous scents that I just can´t review them all one by one. So I decided to group them and do some mini reviews. Here are a few of the noteworthy gourmand scents.

Sweet Anthem - Colin

In the jar this solid perfume is a creamy gourmand with hints of cardamom.
On wet it kind of disappares for a while, I get just a very soft benzoin. After a few moments it warms up and amber emerges. Cardamom is in the background but starting to get more noticeable. I get no frankincense or myrrh at all, for which I´m thankful as I´m not a fan of incense or oriental resins. Cardamom and honey become more and more dominant as this dries and it takes quite a while before they fade. This stage is wonderful! I LOVE cardamom! Amber and benzoin dominate the drydown together with some lingering hints of honey. Longevity is about medium with this one. Sillage is minimal, but then that´s quite normal with solids. I´d love to sample this as an oil as it is very lovely, unfortunately it seems to be a discontinued scent. :(

L'Aromatica - Kulfi

I´ve never eaten kulfi, so I have no idea what it is really, but in the vial this smells exactly like cardamom dough to me, the kind that I use to make cinnamon rolls! Delicious! On wet cardamom dominates in big way. At this stage it doesn´t smell like dough anymore, just a powerful cardamom. The cardamom soon calms down and turns more creamy and sweet. I can definitely smell the coconut and it is such a  delicious coconut! This is incredibly mouthwatering! This scent stays a creamy cardamon/coconut all trough the drydown, but it gains a background of sandalwood. Both sillage and longevity are about medium. Kulfi is much more powerful than Colin and the associations I get are equally powerful, all in all a very nice experience! I don´t quite know if I want a full bottle of this one... It is absolutely gorgeous and a year ago I would not have hesitated, but now this is just not quite "me"...

SaraWen - Cake or Death

In the sample bottle (tiny and really pretty!) this is a  rich and moist vanilla cake, very sweet. On wet there is a lot more amber in this cake and it is not as foody as one might expect from smelling it in the bottle. There are hints of spice in here, I think I get a whiff of cardamon. Something about this scent is also slightly medicinal, at least on my skin, a dark sharpness like some hidden poison. The drydown is a soft vanilla amber, nice but not very special. The sillage is of monster proportions, at least at first, while longevity is about medium. This scent is nice, but not very complex and it doesn´t change very much on my skin... The sweet cake together with darker, more sinister, notes makes for an  interesting as well as enjoyable scent, but I would actually have prefered the rich and moist cake that I could smell in the bottle.

Trying on these scents has reminden me of why I´m not very into gourmands anymore. They are all absolutely lovely, creamy, gorgeous and delicious! But they just don´t take me anywhere, they give very few associations outside of the food they smell like, they bring no images to my mind or transport me away to places in my memory or imagination. Out of these scents Kulfi was the best in that it actually stirred my memory and brought me home to my kitchen and memories of cardamon dough.

Do you enjoy gourmand scents? If so, what are your favorites? If not, why? What scent types do you enjoy the most?

(Sorry about the particularily ugly photo, I couldn´t  be bothered to seek out better light as I am a lazy bastard!)

Perfume Review - Wing of Bat and Ardorem 21

These are the two scents out of my haul from Alkemia that disappointed me. Not really because they are bad scents, but because they are not at all what I expected.

The name Wing of Bat really enchanted me, together with the description, containing notes of oakmoss, green patchouli, fern, dirt, ambergris, leather. I really expected something dark and earthy. In the vial Wing of Bat smells green and herbal with hints of citrus. On wet it is a very sharp and clean kind of scent, very green but not very herbal anymore. This is the kind of sharpness that I associate with cheap men´s cologne and that just gives me a headache and no enjoyment. As this dries it becomes less sharp, but  I still get only lots of green with a vague chypre background. I get no leather, no moss, definitely no dirt, even the slight patchouli I can smell here is not very earthy, it is indeed very green. I guess this isn´t a bad sort of scent... It is made like a classic and old fashioned men's cologne, I´m quite sure I have smelled some commercial scent that is very much like it. As long as you don´t expect anything else it is fine, after the sharp green note in the beginning it is not bad. But if you expect another unique and exciting Alkemia creation this is a disappointment. This one is going on my swaps list, if anyone is still interested in it after this review... ;)

Ardorem 21 is sorted under the category "Musk Spices Suede" in the Alkemia shop and the notes are as follows. "Coriander, Mandarin, Amber, Nutmeg, Saffron, Bourbon Geranium, Blue Lotus, Tobacco, Musk, Clove, Sandalwood, Vetiver, Kashmiri Tea, Cardamom, Black Pepper, and Japanese incense." Lots of spices in that description and I am a huge fan of spicy perfumes, I thought that perhaps the geranium and the lotus won´t be so noticable and a little bit of mandarin can´t drown out all those lovely spices and darker notes. But in the bottle Ardorem 21 smells of mandarin most of all. But it was a spicy mandarin, so I had high hopes still. On wet there is a wonderful flash of spices at first, black pepper, cloves, cardamon, coriander, hints of musk, the mandarin is prominent too, but the spices are more dominant... But then comes the bourbon florals and take over. It is not an awful floral by any means, it is sweet and pretty together with amber and some faint hints of musk and spices. The floral fades with time, and the final drydown is sweet and creamy, quite complex, with tea, musk, amber and a hint of tobacco... I like this one better than Wing of Bat, I can enjoy it and the drydown is lovely... I was just expecting something full of spices, and this isn´t it... This one goes on the swap list too.


Neither of these oils have much of a sillage, Ardorem 21 slightly more than Wing of Bat, and neither lasts very long on my skin, Wing of Bat lasts just a few hours and Ardorem 21 perhaps an hour more.

Perfume Review - Attar al Oudh and De la Forêt

Oud.
I know next to nothing about it. I know that another name is agarswood and that I love it! (If you are interested in this note, you can read more about it here.)

Both Attar al Oudh and De la Forêt contain this note, but in very different ways.

Attar al Oudh is all about oud. In the bottle it is a musty but sweet wood, slightly herbal and medicinal. On skin the true oud note develops, it is musty and pungent, woody and nutty, deep and resinous and probably not a scent that everyone will love. As it dries, amber emerges and the drydown is a gorgeous oud/amber.  This is a very simple scent, there are no surprises, nothing much happens... But if you love oud this is awesome!

De la Forêt is quite similar but a bit more complex. In the bottle this scent smells a lot like Attar al Oudh, but not as musty with more of a fresh forest character. On wet there is a flash of oud at first but then comes other exotic woods and a large dose of musk. This is a more delicate scent, not at all as musty and pungent as Attar al Oudh. The oud is still noticable but one of many notes rather than de dominant note. There are sweet notes of tonka and amber as well as sharper notes that I can´t quite place. This dries down to a gorgeous, but not very special, woody amber that at times morphs into something that smells much like fresh mushrooms. I get that mushroom note sometimes in various scents, I don´t know where it comes from, but I love it! My theory is that it´s a quirk of my skin, that turns some vanillas into this fungal note... There is no vanilla listed in the description of this scent, but it might still be there, so I´m not dismissing this theory quite yet...

Attar al Oudh has greater sillage than De la Forêt, but they both have about the same longevity, about six hours on me. I love both of these scents but perhaps not enough to get full size bottles. But I definitely want to experience more oud perfumes! Can you recommend any?