Casablanca

A very sweet decanter sent me this as a free bottle. ❤️ My first impression of it in the bottle and on my skin is of jasmine, lots of it. Erm, no jasmine in the notes? Does jonquil smell similar? Oh, OK... From a gardening website: "The scent is reminiscent of jasmine and hyacinth; sweet and heavy." Lots of jonquil, then, merging into some lavender. In drydown I find some faint herbal hint, but I would never guess what it was. And an airy wisp of lemon. Mostly, this is jonquil and lavender now.

From the listed notes, I expected a knockback cinnamon black musk with loads of throw, but actually, Phonophobia doesn't overwhelm. It's not super soft, but it is much more mellow than Christmas crackers, and more mellow than how loud cinnamon and black musk can be on me. The notes are as described: cinnamon and dark vetiver-lemon musk. Sometimes I think I also get a little whiff of clove or other spice.

V'al is a glowing, rich, and sumptuous beeswax scent. This beeswax smells yellow with the natural stain of pollen and nectar that bees give it in the hive. The blend is creamy, golden, a little sweet with honey, a little hazy with candle smoke. This one has lots of throw and a long, glorious wear length on me.

Cool, wintry lemon verbena. Lots of it. Then, with the vanilla from the amber, I also have this crossing into lemon-iced vanilla cookie land. Snowy lemon-iced cookies. This is quite sweet and sugary compared with the lemony woods I imagined on reading the notes. Once Winter Trees dries, the woods begin to peer out, almost shyly. The blend becomes sweet and sugary lemon woods, which is more or less how it remains for me for the remainder of its life.

Usually, pine is my friend. In December, I made a body gloss using a pine essential oil that came out smelling a bit like ammonia on my skin. It reminded me of when reviewers say that a pine smells like cat pee on them. That pine wasn't a good match. Unfortunately, this is that sort of pine for me. I never pick up any lotus from this one; it's all the pine.

Mountain Temple smells so much to me like Winter Landscape -- but with much less of the minty snow -- that on the second testing, I put them both on to compare. Winter Landscape: A snow-thick scent, chalky with sandalwood and clove, streaked iron-orange and tonka-brown. Mountain Temple: White sandalwood incense flakes and snow. Yes, they really smell nearly alike on my skin, other than having different amounts and maybe types of snow. The snow in Winter Landscape is much heavier and more minty on me, and the incense in Mountain Temple is stronger. Otherwise, inhaling one immediately brings the other to mind for me. Both blends are wintry and meditative in their mood. I actually prefer Mountain Temple, but they are close enough that my older bottle will likely suffice. Lovely blend.

This is lovely. Warm chestnuts -- woody and a little spicy -- with firewood smoke. This is the smoke of a homestead's glowing red fireplace embers, and I love it. I also get an impression of black iron, like a scolding-hot kettle dangling over the fire. Whether that's real or my imagination, it fits the scene this fragrance paints in my thoughts.

This turns completely to a musty-sock-mistletoe blend on my skin, so I'll just describe the scent before my chemistry gets ahold of it: Crisp bayberry-green fir and a hint of mistletoe. Mistletoe is much more pleasant without my skin than with it. The blend is cool, evergreen-woody, black peppery, and a bit wintry-herbal.

Neptunite is a dark, salty oceanic blend on the imp wand (Elder Gods/Cthulhu-like in mood) and develops its flowers on the skin. Wet on my skin: Dark, salty ocean, black musk, and black orchid, mostly. Jasmine steps up after a few minutes. And dry: The salty ocean continues strong, but the flowers dim somewhat. This blend brings to mind the homicidal mermaids in Rolling in the Deep.

Loads of musk, especially red, with champaca. Strong. As Andradite dries on my skin, I find mahogany and amber coming out, also. But unfortunately, the Lab's red musk also then starts to do the icky thing it does on my skin. I had to try. This is a blend for red musk lovers.

Wet: I love this combination of the sugary rose, red currant, green cognac, vanilla, and guava. The cognac and vanilla are like a dignified procession, a stately Lace -- but they blend well with currant and guava that want to skip and frolic, and rose that's just being girly. Inesite is primarily sweet and fruity at first. Dry: The fruitiness has settled down into the cognac and vanilla, as if wrapping itself in a comforter for the night. The blend is also more musky now, and a little powdery. I think this may be more girly than I will need for a bottle, but I'll really enjoy this decant.

Benitoite reads as a quirky musk blend to me: hard to pin down, like its inspiration sky. I get a cool, aquatic, blue-green musk. It smells "almost" a lot of things — almost camphorous, almost minty, almost like a conifer. Then, as it begins to dry, it goes super salty, and I wonder if it has a salty something-or-other in it from Halite. Benitoite in this phase smells like salty ambergris and strange cool musk on my skin. I really amp whatever the salty ambergris-type thing is. I tend to amp salt, and it pretty much takes over for me.

Mineral birch beer. It's a bit sparkly-fizzy, maybe from the aldehydes. A fizzy sarsaparilla with a little cedar after drydown.

Salty salt-land salt. The rest of the blend smells like ambergris and -- yes! -- warm corn chips. (I mean, this kinda reminds me of golden retriever feet? Because they always smell like corn chips? I don't know why...) The intense salt and ambergris, though, remind me of the briney scent of the Jersey shore when the tide is out. There's even something a little kelpy or mineral here, but I'm not sure if I'm imagining it because it's true to the mental image. Salt isn't my bag of chips, but salt lovers should check this out.