Casablanca

This blend is a fresh, ancient York Peppermint Patty commercial -- not the patty, but the person in white on a mountain top in the whistling wind. Sweet white mint and eucalyptus. The lemon is quieter on me at first. In drydown, the lemon comes out more. It reminds me of Lemon-Scented Sticky Bat more than straight-up lemon peel -- it's blending with the sweet mint and coming out like sugary lemon frosting. After an hour, this is mainly a soft sweet mint, with just hints of the other two notes.

Harvest Moon comes out complex and lovely, dries down to more simplicity. Freshly applied, this blend brings spiced and smoky apples with a smear of warm pumpkin. A little black fig (definitely the black sort of fig) and red wine are soft but present over a distant background of... woodsiness. Leafy tree stuff. This phase is nuanced and multilayered, like many of the Moons. After drydown, I get mainly a sweet plum wine, with a touch of lingering smoke and Other-stuff-ness. Occasional sage whiffs, even. This later life of the blend is more simple and straightforward on my skin.

Black cacao pa-pow. In the bottle, I smell cacao and amber, but on my skin, this is all cacao and copal at first. For both inhales, it's really Cacao and Darkness: the first more perfumey, the second more woody, but still Darkness. Copal begins by sharing a seat with cacao, but gradually takes it over during the wet phase. I've amped copal before, and that may be happening here, because this woody/spicy/incensey dark note that is copal mostly nudges cacao out. I'm not picking up amber at all through this. After this dries, it develops some sweetness. I think that's the amber's sole contribution as this plays out on my skin, but I like the blend.

No one reviewed this yet? Well, here's one. I amp mallow in most blends that have it, as far as I can tell, and that's also happening here. In the bottle, this smells mostly like oats, cake, and cardamom to me. But my very first impression on skin is cardamom marshmallows (!)... Dry grasses and hay emerge shortly, though -- very pretty, very late-summer-to-autumn-reminiscent with the soft cardamom spice. After a few minutes the mallow calms down, and I notice wheat, oats, and a dribble of honey. It does smell like dry honey. (What is that scent of dryness sticking to the honey? I love it.) This is a gentle autumn harvest blend, a scent of soft abundance before winter.

In the bottle, this smells like a light, sweet herbal honey with a blend of citrus notes and what I thought was some red fruit before reading "blackberries" in the description. Fresh on my skin -- and whoa, I applied a lot -- the ginger comes out as part of the herbal quality. (But, then I look up gruit, and it's also herbal: yarrow and rosemary. I am Gruit!) I love herbal blends, so I've really climbed onto the Mead Moon bandwagon at this point. But the herbs are just part of it: the honey is light and quite sweet, not overtly effervescent for me, but playful in hinting at it. Blackberries are also salient in this phase, with a little uplift from citrus. The spices are mild and blendy; I can separate clove and cinnamon during the wet phase, but it's kinda more pleasant not to try. I need to be careful not to huff this too much, because I can feel how its sweetness could bring on a headache. But the blend of herbs, fruits, and spices keeps attracting me, like some honeybee, to take more in. This one does go skin-soft quickly on me, but I'm still glad I picked up a bottle.

A pretty and serene red sandalwood warmed with rosy palmarosa and woodsy-pale cedar. The myrrh was a gentle resinous presence suffusing the blend. This was a lovely sandalwood blend, and it lingered on my skin longer than most perfumes do.

Pots and pots of beeswax and honey drizzled over orange flowers and peel. Beeswax and honey were most prominent for me, with the orange-grove things close behind. Very spring-like, very sweet, very pretty, but with an airy-clean astringency, too, from the ti leaf. The ti leaf added intrigue for me in the early stage; without it, this perfume might have smelled less distinct from some other spring blends. But I noticed the leaf and it added a lot. An appealing blend.

This was nearly Orange Blossom SN on my skin. Just a drip of light watery salt around the edges. Some salt notes go wild on me. This one, though, had a sort of salt that I don't amp like mad, kind of like the recent Luper Sad Love in that way. But no other notes made an appearance.

A highly herbal blend to start, Kommt Mit Zacken started as lots of sage and bay laurel on my skin, backed with an odd animalistic musk and a whiff of tobacco. Mostly the sage and bay laurel. After drydown, a sweet golden amber came out on me in droves. At that point the blend was mainly sweet amber, with little whiffs of herbs. The strange beasty-musk put me off a bit during the early phase, here, but the amber dried phase was lovely.

Oh, this. This was deep jade moss and cypress delishusness. Deep, sink-into-it-like-a-bed green moss and green cypress boughs. I'd like to chill some evening with just this blend and some night swamp sounds playing on YouTube. Ambience without the hematophagic distraction of mosquitoes. The other notes blended to add depth and woodiness -- a forest floorness -- but I couldn't make any other note out individually. I'm out of moss-heavy fragrances now. I might replenish that dry well with a bottle of this one.

This was a very Yule-into-spring scent. Sweetly minty -- almost sugary -- snow primarily, with gleams of amber and green conifers.

I got a chance to try my friend's decants of this line today, and they were so good. This blend smelled like the Boss of Druids. A Druid on (Natural, Plant-Based) Steroids. It was dry, crushed grasses and dry woods for me primarily -- especially what I suspect was the ash -- and then strengthening hazelnuts after drydown. The whole blend struck me as quite dry, natural, and rustic. I love forest blends, and I found this unique among those I've tried.

I got a chance to try my friend's decants of this line today, and they were so good. Die Flamme was one of the standouts for me; I loved its smoky-warm nuttiness on my skin, especially the nutty acorns. The nuts were the most potent aspect on my skin, but wreathed in a cozy smoke. This was not the aggressive black, slightly acrid smoke of Midnight Bonfire for me, but rather somewhere between intimate hearth smoke and little backyard bonfire smoke. Under the nuts and smoke, I got frankincense and woodsiness. This was all quite in my wheelhouse. I agree, though, with Lucchesa that it was a little too close to my beloved Chestnuts and Hearth Smoke bottle to warrant a separate bottle. But I want to recommend a try.

This year's Milk Moon is a soft but wholly nourishing blend, a version of a promised land. In the bottle, the blend is mostly a lightly honeyed milk to me, with hints of Mediterranean fruit. Fresh on my skin, the figs and dates come out, rich with cream, a bit warmed with honey, full and round with hot-summer fruitiness. Olive and cedar trees rustle in the breeze around the edges, woodsy and a little airy. This smells like abundance. My skin seems hungry for abundance, because it eats the scent up quickly. Hopefully a little age will add longevity to the wear.

Figgy, other-fruity red musk. Heavy and sweet. Wood adds some solidity in drydown. I could see red musk lovers liking this one. I thought this had a little oudh funk in it when I first sniffed the wand. There is something a bit animalic here, but it's not jumping out.