Lucchesa
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V'al Hanissim is a gorgeous addition to the Lights of Men's Lives family of scents: warm, golden, burnished, lit from within. It's primarily warm beeswax on me with glowing amber backing it up and adding a little old-fashioned elegance. These are both notes that tend to last well on my skin, and I can still smell it faintly 24 hours after application. Absolutely lovely!
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Finally a kaffeeklatsch scent in which I can truly smell the coffee! It's there in spades in the opening of Coffee Beans and Copal -- nice dark-roasted beans and dark resiny copal. After about an hour, though, the coffee vanished. Which means I now have a much firmer idea what copal smells like, which was kind of the idea behind buying this decant in the first place. SN copal is nice, but I preferred the opening with the strong coffee.
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Library scents consistently break my heart. Black Coffee and Old Books is no exception. First off, I got lots of leather. No coffee beans were in evidence. The strong leather (which I like) quickly mellowed into a more parchment feel, with the bit of dust and mustiness and old paper that I look for in scents like these. A hint of coffee. I decided it didn't matter if there was any coffee at all as long as the old books aroma would stick around on my skin -- this would be my used bookstore scent, my ancient library. But no, within 90 minutes it was barely perceptible. For some reason my skin just obliterates these scents.
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I get vanilla and kind of an airy cardamom, with just a little bit of coffee. No itching or prickling from the cardamom. I agree that it's not ridiculously gourmand and has a perfumey vibe which is lovely. It doesn't last terribly well on my skin, though.
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So, my mother has Alzheimer's disease, and I've heard that losing your scent of smell is an early warning sign. And the two kaffeeklatsch decants I tried this morning had me really worried. Thank goodness for all you reviewers to reassure me, because I am really not smelling coffee in Cafe au Lait and a Wool Blanket at all. A soft, sweet milkiness, a trace of vanilla maybe, but coffee? Maybe, if I imagine it, the drop of espresso that Italian moms put in the warm milk they prepare for toddlers. No more. It's a nice, fluffy, comforting smell, but not the least bit caffeinated to me. ETA: The drydown of this scent is gorgeous and lasts forever. It was still going strong 12 hours after application, which never happens on my skin. I may buy a bottle even if the coffee is exceedingly reticent.
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I wanted Here We Come to be a spiced leather scent with hints of roasted apple, rosemary and fig; without the leather as first listed note, it wouldn't have earned a slot among my Yule decants. But of course it's a fruit scent; on me the leather was barely apparent, and it was primarily baked apple and fig (I haven't tried Lamb's Wool but the apple note reminded me of Huntress from the Liliths a couple years back). It lasted quite well on my skin. This would be delicious as a spiked hot apple cider beverage on a nippy day, and I'm going to add a little rosemary the next time I make an apple crisp, but it's not my kind of perfume.
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Wet, I get plenty of gingerbread from Gingerbread, Patchouli, Leather and Dark Musk, but it's the drier, lighter-colored gingerbread with a prominent ginger note, not the really sticky gingerbread that's almost black from molasses. But as it dries down I get less and less gingerbread from this blend, more and more leather, with a little musk and patch backing it up. On me this is a slightly spicy masculine-leaning blend, and it's really nice: rugged with a hint of spices, not the other way around.
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Mountain Temple is really beautiful. It reminds me somewhat of last year's Pale Snowman without the carrot seed. It's the evergreen forest snow, not the minty one on me, with a curl of sandalwood incense. Very evocative and lovely, and good wear length. Totally work appropriate, too.
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Generally I want to slough off winter's sluggishness, but Brumation is making me embrace it. It is so firmly in my wheelhouse. Mmm, syrupy fizzy labdanum. Yes, with that cola vibe, but add in dark sweet tobacco and vetiver -- the latter being similar to the one in Two Sheep and Two Goats -- and you have something I want to cozy up to on a long winter evening. The moss adds a cologne-like touch, just a touch -- this is definitely unisex. If the patchouli emerges with aging, that would be lovely, but it's already pretty great, with good wear length on me. Magnetite Phoenix, with a lot of the same components, fell flat on me, but Brumation is going on the bottle list.
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Cabbage White on me is powdery orris and lots and lots of lily of the valley. The vanilla cream is gentle and not prominent. The cream note is not always well-behaved on me, but this one is subdued; if you like all the notes except for dairy here, it shouldn't deter you. This old fashioned floral isn't my kind of perfume and was generously gifted to me; I'm glad I got to try it but will be passing on this decant.
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Colemanite Phoenix is a beauty. Dry, pure desert scents predominate here. I recently tried White Sage SN and was astonished by how complex a perfume that single note was; the sage here isn't identical (less perfumey than the white), but it's similarly complicated. It's not your usual dandelion sap either but something more silvery gray than spring green. In fact, the colors of this scent are the silvery gray-green of sage and dusky purple of lupine lit by a sunset. Creosote and borax sound nasty, and I don't think of lupine having much scent at all, but don't let that bother you. If you think you'd like to smell like the tenacious plants that bloom in the desert, don't miss the chance to try this.
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You Might Be a Daisy is all leather on me. New leather, like a Tandy leather shop or a leather goods stall in Tijuana. Or Elspethdixon has it absolutely right: cowboy/tack shop, not black leather jacket. I had Colemanite Phoenix on the other wrist, but it didn't help me suss out the sage here, and I didn't get wildflowers either. Or smoke or gunpowder, for that matter. Just fresh leather and lots of it, for a good long time.
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I had such an odd experience with Christougenniatiko 2019 that I wondered if my decant had gotten mislabeled. On me, this was primarily fruity. It smelled like the blackberry or blackcurrant note smells on my skin, in other words, like berry candy. There does seem to be an evergreen note as well, but it's subsumed by the fruit. I kept reading through the scent notes to see what could be causing the berry sensation -- opoponax? Never reacted to it like this before. Anyway, I'm hoping to see another review soon to see if anyone else had this reaction or if maybe I was smelling something else.
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Testing blind I thought, Opoponax! Or labdanum? And labdanum! And I was delighted at the lovely syrupy dark resins, and this was looking like a bottle. As it dried down, though, something went a bit sour on my skin, either the frankincense or the iron note or the combination of the two. It was never unpleasant, it just wasn't amazing anymore. I think this will age beautifully if it works on you, but I will probably let go of my decant as it doesn't seem to like my skin chemistry.
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Maybe I'm having an off day, or I need to let my decants rest more than 24 hours from the mail, but I Hear You Call, Pine Tree was not terribly audible on me. First there was lotus, then there was a breath of pine needles, really creating the sensation of them floating to me on the wind. Gradually they faded, and within two hours there was silence. No lotus, no pine. I will try again in a couple of weeks. This has real beauty to it if it weren't so faint on me.
