Casablanca

SWOB seems to have jasmine, something honey-like that might be honeysuckle, maybe gardenia, something fruity, a little cinnamon or cassia, and something resinous, maybe amber. It's OK. (nod nod) Not bad. I'm not super excited.

This perfume oil smells nothing like the macabre tone of its art. It's a light and lovely sugared white tea, with orange blossom and smaller amounts of lemon, mint and honey. Rockrose (labdanum) will be serving as a base note and fixative here, but I'm not sure I'm picking it out. I like this enough to want more than one bottle. For me, this could become a go-to white tea fragrance.

This is a vacationer's marine scent, rather than a mariner's marine -- it smells a bit like the real thing, but more like a fantasy of ocean. This smells like pale aqua-green to me. It's clean, bright and leaves an ocean impression without being especially salty. (There's something a little tangy and a little salty in the mix that seems to impersonate brine without smelling much like it. Not necessarily a bad thing. It depends on what you want.) Windward Passage goes soapy on me after drying, but not to a degree that bothers me. If I'd had it at the time, I probably would've taken it with us to the islands, but worn other blends more often.

Yep. White tea and ginger. Also pale yellow citrus notes. I get lemon and I think something else -- a drop of pink grapefruit? Ginger blends can be hit or miss for me. I like this one and would suggest it for ginger lovers. Refreshing, impish and a bit zesty.

Wand: Floral cherry. Definitely soft lilies. I don't know the smell of stephanotis. Wet: Cherry and then lilies. I don't recognize anything else. Dry: Lilies, slightly powdery. I'd rather the lilies didn't go powdery on me as they dry, but I'll use the imp. No bottle required.

Wand: Cherry, orange, chocolate. In that order. Wet: Cherry and orange, with a floral touch from it being orange blossom. The chocolate is unexpectedly subdued on my skin. I also seem to get something vanillic -- benzoin or something. Dry: The neroli blooms on my skin as this dries. I barely smell chocolate now. This wouldn't be everyday for me... but I don't wear anything everyday. This is not especially sinful -- it's pretty and playful. I like it, a fun scent.

Wand: A lot of chocolate milk. And a little chocolate. Wet: Milky milky chocolate. Wholesome. A chocolate for the reasonably nice kid who gets mostly A's and B's, or perhaps for the adult who was that kid. And for everyone else who likes it. Dry: Not a morpher. Pretty good longevity for me. Pleasant, indulgent.

I absolutely love this scent. It's an evil sort of chocolate. It is, as advertised, bittersweet with a thick but understated creamy note. But there's also something else, possibly a few something elses. I get a resinous note that reminds me strongly of myrrh. Possibly opoponax. I also smell a little something woody. I don't know if it's separate, or a wood tone to another component. It reminds me of teak. Whatever it is, I smell this blend and my brain turns to a drifty, serotonin-rich fog. A friend smelled this and said, "Urrhhhh..." and winced away. (I know I love myrrh and she hates it, so maybe that's the cause.) The longevity is great on me. I need more bottles of this pleasey.

2016 Bottle: Cinnamon-cassia, ginger, and Snake Oil. I also get a sense of something sweetly resinous, like myrrh. Wet: The above spices, with the ginger stronger now -- however I don't smell the Snake Oil right off the bat on my skin. The sweet resin impression is still there for me underneath -- this also reminds me a bit of snickerdoodle cookies, if they were made of more cinnamon than anything else. The cinnamon, she is mighty. Dry: This is mainly cinnamon now, with the other spices as support. Nothing else stands out. On the plus, I've had no skin irritation from it. A few hours later it's mostly a dustier spicy cinnamon.

Wand: Blue-green coniferous honey. Wet: Coniferous blast. (Sounds like a superhero power you don't often hear of.) On my skin, I barely register honey at all, which is odd because I smelled honey in the ambient air as soon as I opened the vial. Dry: This is almost all conifer tree for a while, a conifer with a quietly sweet touch... and then boom, lotsa honey. A wintery honey.

Wand: A pleasant floral honey. I don't know the smell of oleander, but for me, the floral part is kind of like a fruity honeysuckle. Wet: Sweet, slightly fruit-toned, honeysuckle-ish flowers, and a little honey. Spring-like. The honey note is kind of thin. Dry: Pretty, and evocative of spring. Not powdery so far.

Wand: I thought, "cherry-syrup berries?" Then I looked up redoul. It's a plant that produces a toxic blackberry-like fruit. The scent doesn't make me think of blackberries, but rather a cherry version of Dimetapp. Basically, it smells to me like an aromachemical cherry-grape. But this could be exactly as redoul berries smell, for all I know. Wet: My imaginary cherry Dimetapp is, at least, a cheerful assault on the nose. Out of the earthly seasons, I'd call this one summery. But really it's more clinical. Dry: As this dries, something starts to smell off. This isn't reacting well with my skin.

Wand: Red musky leather and balsam. And then I get an earthy, fuzzy sense of moss. Wet: Red musk scares me, so I apply with caution. ... Yeah, this is that red musky thing I can't do. Loads of leather in the mix, though, too, and it blends right into the red. The combination of balsamic moss and leather could turn this into a sexy Old West thing on the right person, who is not me. Dry: Since I don't get along with this red musky odor, it naturally has the strongest throw of today's test scents. I'm wearing two different scents each arm right now, but when I catch a random whiff of anything, it's just this.

Wand: WYSIWYG. I get white leather and sandalwood. Wet: Same notes. It seems like there may also be frankincense mingling with the sandalwood, or maybe that's just how this sandalwood smells to me. It's dry and grainy in a way that I often also get from the frank. Dry: A white musk comes out, but this is mainly grainy and desert-like in my nose. Smells like bleached leather and white sands.

2016 Bottle: This is the most Snake Oily of the snake pit blends I've tried so far. The SO is right there, just warmed and made more rustic by a lovely soft leather, tonka, red sandalwood and sage combination. Wet: First impression: Snake Oil bundled in soft, tan leather. The tonka seems to merge well with the vanilla in the SO, and the red sandalwood and sage add some hot, arid plains. The whole is soft and subtle, though -- this isn't a scent with a punchy sillage by any means. Dry: No change. Lasts for less than a half day before I feel like I want to re-apply. (That's a lie. I want to re-apply as often as possible.) Lovely lovely scent.

Wand: Lemony tea and a biting jasmine. I normally like jasmine. But this one smells a little harsh. Wet: A high-pitched jasmine shoves to the front, shrieking "Eeeeee!" and freaking out, even though it's just a cool cup of lemony tea trailing behind. I don't pick out neroli or anything else at this stage. Dry: I actually get a little of the neroli now, on the back end of a sniff, once I let the still-freaking jasmine run past. And maybe there's a little vanilla? The blend as a whole lapses to a faint jasmine within an hour.

Wand: Cucumber and lettuce, and fresh water drops sitting on them like dew. Mostly cucumber, though. Wet: Green-splosion. The notes are cool and lean aquatic and a little floral. I get cucumber (mostly), lettuce, grass, maybe a little galbanum, maybe a little green tea. Gardenia, maybe, adds a creamy floral. Dry: This turns toward cucumber soap on me after drying. Mostly, though, it's the same scent, but mild now, instead of being so forwardly fresh. I think I can find occasions for the cool green of this sample.

Bottle: Mint that's soft, not too camphoraceous, and green tea. Wet: Beautiful mint, mild but pervasive, with a little green bergamot. Plenty of green tea to drink in here, also, with the Snake Oil base under it. This is lovely. Dry: It doesn't take long for the Snake Oil to take another step forward, becoming a little stronger; but then on me it stays in that spot, making the mint tea a little exotic, but never stealing its limelight. This is gorgeous, a new one for the favorites list.

Fuzzy cozy... Coyote or Doc Constantine, which I think may use the same musk. Lazy green... Shamisen, On the Porch in the Rain or Apothecary. Tea-drinking... Dorian (black), Green Tree Viper (green) or Iulia (white).

I like this much more than I expected to when I picked up the three riders. Wand: Dark, sweet myrrh incense and leather. Unexpectedly perfumey, but not in a bad way. More of a black musk way -- it has that vetiver-lemon myrtle-musk feeling. Wet: Sweet myrrh, soft black leather and a pinch of fragrant tobacco. Tobacco can easily go wrong for me, but this works: the smokey leaves quickly step into line with the rest of the scent in a sort of best supporting actor role. Powdery can easily go wrong for me, but there's a little of that here and it's almost atmospheric -- like the smoke in the film noir bar. I can see how there's amber in this, but for me it's mostly hiding in the dominant sweet myrrh/opoponax. Dry: This gets more powdery on me as it dries, but still OK for my tolerance. Imma gonna piggyback on the last review and say yes, this also reminds me of Haunted!

Wand: Almond oatmeal with honey and cream. Wet: Almond, honey, oats and a little cream. This is utterly wholesome-smelling, like I've just secured at least the first two levels of Maslow's needy pyramid for years to come, and can sit all day, if I want to, hugging bowls of hot breakfast. This is the concept-odor of sweet old-school provision. It also reminds me of ancient Egyptians drinking their morning grainy beer. But this surely smells better. Dry: Dana is layered but unchanging for a half day on me. Then it fades gradually. Lovely. Tasty, but not too foody for me.

Preamble: I'm not good at patchouli and usually avoid it. Wand: So, the autumn is here on the wand, heavily balsamic and with rose geraniums seeming to play late-blooming red flowers or, more conceptually, even red autumn leaves. But on the wand, this autumn thing wafts over a bed of dried and cracked patchouli. Just a patch of patch, really. Sniffing again: the leather is very brown-toned, and the opoponax and (I think?) violet leaf seem mingled behind that to make together a deep brownish-green base tone. Wet: Once this is on my skin, I get mostly a balsamic rose geranium, with whiffs of an earthy violet. Dry: I don't smell much leather now, but the blend has become quite -- well -- blendy, and it may have kind of sunken into other notes. The balsamic geranium continues, but I think the lovely violet leaf has stepped forward? I've never smelled that component alone, but this sounds like descriptions I saw when looking at differences between the flower and the leaf. But I also keep getting a sense of the flower, mixed with the geranium. I haven't really smelled the patchouli distinctly since this hit my skin. I kinda like this, and will come back to my vial in fall, but I don't know that I'd go for a bottle if one were to come available.

I had to get a sample of one of my favorite poems. Wand: Um, designer perfume? I didn't expect this to smell like something off the wall of Sephora, but that's the impression off the bat. I get a powdery amber musk perfume with a little incense and spice. Smells more like an alcohol base than anything I've sampled from BPAL before. Wet: A poof of musky, ambery powder and a little incense. Ehm. Dry: Oof.

Wand: Dusty white frost and white plastic. Wet: This smells like artificial winter. Minty, sugary, vanillic, and plasticky, plus violet flowers, I think. It's like a sweetened toothpaste somehow combined with the flavor of the toothbrush itself. Dry: On my skin, winter quickly passes away and leaves the violet and plastic.

Wand: The color purple. In a pretty good way. Like, a rolling-in-it-should-be-socially-acceptable sort of way. Mostly, I get the plum, with a touch of violet, and resins behind them. Wet: Rich woodland purple in plum and violet. Plum hits the nose right before the flower. This seems to be plum++. Behind the double purple hit is a soft, dark, resinous, well-grounded mix of the myrrh (soft resin), amber (with a little vetiver maybe), and benzoin (rounding things out with a vanillic tone). The effect is like plum-colored violets growing in soft, resinous earth. Dry: Fade and fade and mostly gone in an hour. This has flown the phoenix coop.