Casablanca

Sugary, super-gooey apricot raspberry jam. Compared with the other sufganiyots I've tried, this one is bringing out soo much goo... and less pastry, at least in the opening.

The gooey-ness soon turns a bit plasticky on my skin, and the pastry doesn't show up as much as in earlier sufganiyots.

I'll see how this settles, but right now, it's a relief to not want to bottle one thing from this Yule collection. Previous sufs have been lovely on me, but something in this one just isn't gelling. So to speak. 🙂

Mm. Toasty-warm, bready spice cake with honey and... fruit? Cranberries?

While this is wet on my skin, I also get something the fruit spectrum, like cranberries and raisins. Yum. This fades in drydown, however.

Warm, cozy, delicious. Hildegard's Cakes reminds me of Amber Incense and Honey Cakes, and it could be a similarly sacred offering... albeit one that leans more gourmand (spicy and fruity) and with less incense and honey. The cakes of AIHC were sopping with honey; here, they are warm and dry, but honey-sweetened. I finished my bottle of Amber Incense and Honey Cakes last month, and Hildegard's Cakes would make a lovely replacement.

"Venerable honeyed cacao." At least, that was my first thought when Chocolate Cat was newly applied on my skin: like, a dry, mature scent that's nevertheless mostly honey and cocoa. The aged vetiver seems to age the whole scent to me, somehow: to bring it up a few decades into some dignity and a dry wit cultivated from life lessons.

It's an intriguing effect, and I keep huffing my wrist to explore it more. The whole scent is suffused with a toasted, caramel tone that only seems to add to the sense of maturity and life-seasoning. In another scent, it could be playful or sexy... but I think this vetiver is taking the other notes along a different road. Vetiver sometimes turns dank on my shelf if I ignore it instead of airing it periodically, and that might happen here, but it's dry and smoky for now. I'm happy to say the musk is softer than I expected.

Dry, toasted, and honeyed cocoa steeped and aged in dark vetiver. I like.

I've been lamenting that I'm out of cozy cedar blends---I associate cedar strongly with the concept of "home"---and looking for a new one. This one sounded swampy, which is a different vibe, but I hoped the cedar might stand out.

Freshly applied, this perfume gives off green swamp. Spanish moss hangs everywhere in the mind's eye view of this scent. The cedar is a warm presence, though... rooting and grounding this wet, murky wood. 

In drydown, I find a little gingerbread mingling with the cedar. It's a lovely portion of the scent, and I think a Gingerbread and Smoky Cedar blend just became a wish for my future. But this for one, it's a little too swampy for what I'm usually drawn to.

Swampy moss, warmed with cedar and a little gingerbread.

2021 version

Milky hot chocolate blackened with coffee, softened with brown sugar.

I'm not getting much cinnamon. It's present, but rather less than I'd hoped for. This may be simply because I've been an absolute cinnamon addict this winter, making cinnamon soup and dusting every hot milky drink with it...

El Dia is mostly about the milky hot cocoa, with brown sugared coffee and a little cinnamon whiff on the side.

Gingerbread Campfire is heavy on the campfire, both on the wand and my skin. Billowing wafts of smoke and burning sparks when I inhale a bit away from the skin, and something a little odd when I sniff up close. Mostly, though, this blend offers the smoke and fire in abundance. It's not an office scent.

I don't notice gingerbread until drydown, when it peers out, black-eyed, choked in smoke and soot. Even then, I don't find much of it---just glimpses between black clouds. 

I love a good smoky blend, but hoped for more gingerbread in the balance. I'll see how this one settles.

Fresh on my skin, Gingerbread and Rose Incense surprised me with a sugary pink rose blast devoid of gingerbread. It soon shifted toward a sheer (and less sugary) pink rose, which quickly powders up in a white-musky way. Sometimes I thought I smelled a little something like bergamot or petitgrain, too. 

This blend goes more perfumey and powdery on me as it headed into drydown. I started to get a ginger hint, but little in the way of gingerbread. 

Once dried, this one had gone full-tilt pink-powder-musk rose. This is a better perfume for others.

Extra-thick and glossy sugar glaze slathers cinnamon-ginger buns.

Freshly applied, this smells like glaze four inches deep. This glaze isn't fooling around---I can imagine "icing"-fishing for the buns buried and waiting within its shining, sticky depths.

As Gingerbread Sticky Buns dries, I start to pick up some nice, earthy base note(s) that remind me of what I loved in Gingerbread and Leather from last year's Yules. There might be some well-blended patchouli or something similar grounding this one, and it's lovely. Gingerbread is a softer presence here, melting into the bready part of the buns and mostly adding ginger as a standout spice.

Gingerbread, coconut bark (woof!), toasted pecan, and a surprise boat-load of saffron. 

In the first whiff from the wand, I also get a nice amount of sugar, but this drops back when I apply the blend to my skin. After a moment to warm up, the clove wafts out, joining the gingerbread, coconut, toasty nuts, and dry saffron. 

Cozy, warm, spiced and nutty gingerbread. Love.

Sugar Cookies/Popcorn Garland smells like kettle-browned butter over popcorn. I don't get a lot of cookie from this one, but there's stove-melted butter to spare.

Erm. This is closer to what I thought Sugar Cookie Snek would smell like. Actually. It may be a muskier version, but it has all the heavy, sexy cookie. A cookie with impact.

Spices, woods, and heavy-ass musks smother a maple-toned brown sugar cookie. Satyr plus Sugar Cookie really remind me, here, of Snake Oil and Smut. Kind of like a Snake Smut Sugar Cookie.

I think for me, the red musk part of this is a little heavy to warrant a bottle. But, you know, regardless... I can smell there's something good happening here, in this part of the woodlands.

Sugar Cookie Cathedral, freshly applied on my skin, is a buttery sugar cookie with something like a faint, half-hearted wood polish beneath. While wet, the blend continues on this course... and it smells a bit like something is missing. While I wait for Cathedral's base notes to better emerge, I also keep thinking I smell a whiff of glue with the wood polish.

Much later, I find that the incense has finally emerged, but the cookie has mostly vanished on my skin by that point. For me, at least, this one is Sugar Cookie... and later Cathedral, rather than Sugar Cookie Cathedral.

Last night in testing this, without remembering what Snake Oil was combined with for its making, I thought it smelled like cherry Snek... and morphed into cherry tobacco Snek.

That's mostly what I'm getting from Snekhellden this morning, too -- with the addition of leather as the blend warms on my skin. The whole is fairly soft, and not much else is coming through for me.

This is a comfortable hearthside blend, almost cozy. I'm not sure I need a bottle, but I've much enjoyed the sampling.

Rich chocolate-pumpkin cheesecake with crumbling graham cracker crust.

Last night, I didn't get much cherry glaze until drydown, but this morning, the glaze is more potent and present. 

This pumpkin combines with the chocolate to lean toward peanut butter on my skin. When I tried this on last night, before I saw the notes list, I thought this was chocolate and peanut butter with graham crackers.

One for gourmand lovers. Rich, heavy, foodie.

Last night, when first testing this, Leaf Moon brought me so much perfect woodsmoke, and I was in love.

This morning, though, it is mostly bringing me the Dead Leaves note. In the warm-up, red musk wafts out behind the dead leaves. The woodsmoke is a lighter presence, coloring the other notes, but doing far less to soften and obscure them.

There's now too much red musk in the balance for me, but it's a relief to remove something from my overloaded cart.

Cleansing. This is as lemony as you might guess from the described notes, with some cool, minty camphor on the side. 

On my skin, this turns to lemonheads candy after drydown.

I think this would be lovely with a wee bit of fresh rosemary EO added, for those inclined to homebrew. It reminds me a lot of a lemongrass-rosemary essential oil spritz I used to make and use about the house.

White sage is often a soft note in the Lab blends I've tried, a coolness along the periphery. But this one is---wonderfully---far more white sage than I expected.

On both my friend and me, this one is predominantly sage. Like: white sage smelled close up, with the cool herbal tone, airiness, paleness, and even the soft leaf texture in the note. The lime is there, too, playfully green, and citrusing all over the place. I also get a sugared quality to it. It's present, but it feels like a close companion to the sage, rather than overwhelming it.

Cool, airy white sage wafting around a sugared green lime. Fresh scent for late winter through spring. I'll probably need a bottle.

This smelled perfect on my friend: a delightfully sugary sugar cookie.

But I amp the butter in this like a kid in the kitchen. On me, this is butter cookie with some sugar. My heart cries for more sugar. 🤗 But this has enough sugar that I still like it... possibly enough for a bottle upgrade.

Part of me wants some snickerdoodley spice in this. I also keep imagining how nice it would be with more sugar and the vanilla cardamom of Perfectly Normal Childhood/Lights, Camera, Something. I didn't know I needed Cardamom Extra Sugar Cookie, but I'm feeling it now.

When I sniff this on the decant wand, it's part sugar cookie, part Snek.

When I put it on, though, it's mostly a woody Snek, with a hint of cookie. 

I'm really interested in a very sugary Snek. I'll see how this ages, but it's not currently slated for an upgrade.

Deep, mature red roses are the Queen, and a soft, meditative, lemony palo santo her court.

I picked up a decant of this, and when my friend sampled it, her experience was like that of other reviewers: boom plum.

I get the opposite. Some marshmallow notes I simply amp to the moon, and that's the way of it here. At first, I get nothing but poofy vanilla marshmallow. After some minutes, the black plum slinks in, but the marshmallow still keeps it pretty well hemmed in.

So, essentially: lots of marshmallow over a little dollop of black plum.

Spicy, smutty jasmine over a background pumpkin and red musk. 

Spicy: The pumpkin spices are delightful on the jasmine. I'm not sure they're really just the pumpkin-typical stuff; they seem richer and more varied.

Smutty: Smutty as in Smut-ty, for this gives off some sugars.

Jasmine: Forward.

Pumpkin: A little buttery, and a lot in the background. It's a gentle, warming atmo-pumpkin.

Red musk: Strong when the blend first arrived, but it has mellowed some and, on this second test, blends into the other notes more. Amazingly, the red musk doesn't completely suck on me in this perfume.

I like this. But I think the jasmine might be a little too extra what I wear these days.

Coffee Snek. Mostly the Snek. No pumpkin, and only wee hints of pumpkin spice.

I like Coffee Snek, but I'm definitely not getting what some other reviewers are.

Freshly applied, Antikythera Pumpkin gives off a lot of lacquer -- almost a chemical varnish smell -- and some greasy oil over abundant wood. There's a spicy texture to the blend, alongside its dark oil, but the woods and lacquer stand out most strongly. Hints of black vanilla lurk underneath, but this isn't a vanilla blend in the main.

In this dries, the chemical quality calms down and leaves the lovely wood.

What I'm not getting a lot of is pumpkin. There's a pumpkin spice texture but little pumpkin. Still, if you enjoy Antikythera this is worth a try, and it may age well.

Warm, very buttery pumpkin mash dominates the opening on my skin, but Moroccan's lightly spicy carnation lurks behind. A warm vanilla suffuses the pumpkin. The cinnamon, other pumpkin spices, and musk are also present but smooth and mild. 

After it dries, Moroccan Pumpkin's balance evens out between warm buttery pumpkin and lightly spiced carnation.

I thought this was too much butter-pumpkin when I first tried it, but on a second test, it seems better balanced and I keep huffing and enjoying it. Enough like a Moroccan Jack to merit a try if you like either.