Heart Beet

[Jenjin]

Raw, wet beets, pulsating blood musk, and raw wild ginger.

 

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

 

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

 

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

― Walt Whitman

 

 

 

 

[jiggahava]

Right away I get a pickled candied ginger that comes storming out of the gate. The ginger is all I can smell.

 

Couple of hours in, no beets whatsoever. All ginger, but there is a slight metallic tinge I'm getting.

 

Many hours later this scent remains beet-free and the ginger has lost its strong edge and is a soft, musky ginger. This is probably the best part of the stage, but i wanted beets! Kind of bummed that I get no beets out of it. I could chalk it up to skin chem, but I think the ginger kicked all the other notes asses.

 

Hoping aging will make this guy more beet-y.

[ghoulnextdoor]

I was a little scared to try this one because I've read that the same component that gives petrichor, that old rain-whisperer, that wet, mineralic tang, is also present in beets. Geosmin. This irregular sesquiterpenoid explains why I do not care for the scent of petrichor and cannot stomach beets. Except for pickled beets, which I love, but I'm a bit of a pickle fiend; you could probably pickle up an old boot, and I'd love that, too.

 

But in Heart Beet there is only the swiftest, most fleeting whiff of dirt and stony dampness and then the immediacy of what I think of as shampoo ginger. We have a profusion of ginger-but-not-quite-ginger growing wild in our backyard, and when you dig it up, it looks just like ginger, and it has that same fiery-floral tang of fresh ginger too, but there's something that smells a little soapy about it, as well, which gave us pause and made us think maybe we shouldn't be eating it! We looked it up, and we are pretty sure it's "shampoo ginger," which could be eaten (but it's bitter) but is more often used in toiletries and cosmetics. And then, at the back of that zesty-floral-freshness is a murky musk, slightly sweet, subtly earthy hum that is so weirdly, unexpectable wearable.  

 

This scent is as if you dug up a magenta-blooded, lumpy, heart-shaped taproot and deemed it a quirky imaginary friend and shared all your juicy secrets with it...and then that dang beet tried to give you some sassy advice.

[frizzlechicken]

This one took me on a wild ride, and it's mainly that it needed time to settle. I blind-bottled it and it arrived over a week ago. I tried it the next day and was sure I hated it. All I could smell was dirt (like fresh earth) floating on the air of a mid-spring day, and NEROLI NEROLI NEROLI. I very nearly sold it right off then and there, but because I am a sucker for unusual things and cool label art, I decided to let it rest a bit.

 

Well damn! This morning I sniffed it again and thought, well, let's give it one more shot. I am so glad I did! Now that it's rested, all the notes seem to have blended and smoothed. Totally gone is the earthy smell; I still detect the fresh spring air when wet, but mostly now it's blood musk, ginger and neroli (much quieter). It dries down to mostly blood musk and I have enjoyed the ride. It will be lovely for spring. Heart Beet, shantay you stay.