Reviews of Nostalgie, Jour E, and Cocoa Sandalwood
Thank you, Natalie, for your reviews of Nostalgie, Jour Ensoleillé, and Cocoa Sandalwood on Another Perfume Blog! Your analogy made me smile because sometimes it does feel like the little engine that could around here, lol, just trying to slowly and consistently make progress up the mountain. We probably all feel that way though, making gradual progress in various areas of our lives.
I smelled an interesting new essential oil recently: sunflower. I’d never heard of it before, but it’s a natural extract of sunflower that smells very green to me, with herbal tones, and it reminds me of chrysanthemum. I could see it in a green floral. New ingredients are always coming out to tempt us. I recently bought a kilo of a new cypress oil that is very interesting, and I want to use it in an all-natural version of Forest Walk. I also had someone request a less sweet version of Tabac Aurea, which is something I”ve thought about, so I finally made some initial tests and think it would be possible. And I’m playing with some natural floral blends. No shortage of ideas on the To Do list! 🙂
Fantastic review…made me think about Champagne de Bois and now I can see the similarities!
Sunflower essential oil? I am intrigued! And I almost fainted when I read an all natural version of Forest Walk! I have been thinking about that one and wishing for some more for the summer and when I go to the Poconos Mountains….to have it in all natural format would be outstanding 😀 !!
You’ll have to share some pics from the Poconos. Sounds beautiful!
I’m trying to get spiced citrus vetiver samples on the site by the weekend, if all goes well.
Laurie, what makes Tabac Aurea smell sweet? I’m asking because until I read this your post I didn’t know TA was sweet. I know that my nose can’t process some of the ingredients that others perceive like sweet (but others are fine, I smell sweetness in many perfumes – for example, Vintage Rose smells sweet to me) – and here’s a unique opportunity to ask somebody who actually knows :).
Hi Undina! That’s actually a really interesting question. I’ll come back here and answer it this weekend…
The sweetness in Tabac Aurea comes from several sources. The vanilla is the most obvious source, but the synthetic ambers and musks have some sweetness too, and the clove and ionone also add sweetness. One of the tobacco ingredients also adds sweetness.
Tabac Aurea also has dry woodsy ingredients, and the overall sweetness level depends on how the sweet and dry balance out for you. To some people (possibly yourself included), the dry elements overpower the sweeter ones. If you smell plain vanilla you do smell it as sweet, but if it is overpowered by dry woods you’d miss the sweetness of the vanilla underneath. For others, the sweet vanilla and other sweet items are stronger than the dry woods and it ends up too sweet. For many, luckily, the balance is about right.
More than any other scent, Tabac has people at all ends of the spectrum from people who smell no sweetness (very dry and masculine) to those who smell it as a tobacco cookie, lol. To me, it is on the sweet side. It’s a cold weather scent to me. It’d be fun to try to make a version that was not only a bit more dry, but also more consistent from one person to the next. I’m trying the formula without one of the musks, not that the musk was adding much sweetness, but because musks alter how people smell the other ingredients. We’ll see what I can come up with. I can’t simply cut vanilla and musk because the amber would get much too strong, so I need to add some dry things to replace the lost vanilla and musk.
Hope that made sense! It’s a good question, and more complicated than you might think!
Funny but on me Tobacco Aurea is just that…a tobacco cookie and I love it that way…also Winter woods comes off very sweet which I also adore! (both satisfy my sweet tooth!).
Thank you, Laurie! It’s extremely interesting. I’ll test it more thinking about what you wrote. But it’s definitely not a cookie for me 🙂 (and I like it this way)
Undina, when I have a tester of a version with less musk and amber I’ll send you a sample to see if it has more or less sweetness to you. I want to try my new cypress absolute in it because it has beautiful tobacco undertones.