Sonoma Scent Studio has launched Sienna Musk and Winter Woods, two new fragrances for fall and winter:
Sienna Musk ~ "Warm spices and subtle mandarin on a base of woods and musk. This fragrance is softly gourmand, a delicious spicy and woodsy musk scent." With notes of musk, sandalwood, nutmeg, cardamom, ginger, clove, mandarin, cedar, and cypress.
Winter Woods ~ "A cozy perfume featuring ambered woods with a touch of smoke, perfect for fall and winter. The opening smoke note settles to the background as woods and amber warm up. The long-lasting sweet, smoky drydown is a gentle woodsy gourmand." Featuring guaiacwood, cedar, sandalwood, birch tar, cade, oakmoss absolute, castoreum, amber, vetiver, ambergris.
Sonoma Scent Studio Sienna Musk and Winter Woods are available in 15 or 30 ml Eau de Parfum; samples are also sold.
Other recent launches from Sonoma Scent Studio: Wood Violet & Vintage Rose.
These are both great winter/holiday scents. Beautifully done, reasonable priced, small bottles- SSS knows a way to the perfumista's heart…
We like Sienna Musk! Winter Woods may be a bit “trapped in a tea chest” for me, but I will keep an open mind. I am also eagerly awaiting Gardenia Musk, in which I have been assured by Laurie the gardenia is demure and submissive – rare behaviour in this note, as you'll agree.
I did prefer Sienna Musk, too, but I thought the WW was pretty and well done and could be a real crowd pleaser. I don't really do gourmand…The big SSS winter winner to me is Fireside- the first dab packs a wallop, but the drydown is beautiful.
I'm seriously considering asking for the Sienna Musk for X'Mas, but I'm torn between that and Incense Avignon (love at first smell!) or Andy Warhol Silver Factory. Of course, with the economy the way it is the SM is the best choice, and my husband and I honeymooned in Healdsberg, CA so I have fond memories of the place. Support the local economy and all that. 😉
It's so good to see more of SSS fragrances featured! Laurie is so wonderful, and her fragrances are amazing. I am a big fan and have a few of them. Sadly, I am anosmic to most musks, so I don't get to enjoy her musks and body scents. However, I have tested Sienna Musk, which I can smell for about 15 minutes before it disappears. While I can smell it – oh! It is just heavenly warm. It makes me think of laying under a wonderful goosedown comforter, in the sunlight, when you know it is about zero degrees outside….It is radiant yet clean.
I've not yet smelled Winter Woods, though I wil pick up a sample of it soon. My fav's of hers are Velvet Rose and Rose Musc – pure labdanum heaven.
Dagmar – you should definitely try out her frags, and go for it! You can always pick up one of the others. Laurie's frags are so special, and they often layer well with each other. You should try samples of Sienna Musk, Opal (another body musk), Champagne de Bois (lovely incense), and Ambre Noir – really beautiful warm fragrances.
Truer words never spoken :-).
Oh yes! I will definitely be sampling these two, and might as well pick the few of her line that I didn't order in my first sample order. Really fabulous quality scents! Thank you Robin, for featuring her perfumes on your blog!
I also am looking forward to the Gardenia scent. Did Laurie say when she thought that one would be ready for release?
Thank you all for the reviews, I haven't tried them yet! “Trapped in a tea chest” sounds very up my alley.
Thanks 🙂
Hey, I didn't even know there was a gardenia coming! Goody. But obviously I don't know when!
C'mon Robin, aren't you the all seeing, all knowing perfunista? '~)
Seriously though, the Gardenia Musk has been listed as coming soon on the site for a while now. I was wondering if Vanessa above knew since it sounds like she has inquired with Laurie about it.
I should have directed my question to her personally, but I have been messing up so many times, calling posters the wrong name that I was afraid. Let's see, I have called Erin, “Kevin” and Dawn, “Gail”, so far. (hanging head in shame)
…goes back to check and make sure it really was Vanessa that said Laurie told her the Gardenia would be demure…
Oh brother, I mean I called EriC, Kevin…my credibility here is now completely shot.
SSS Encens Tranquille is also very nice.
“A rich, woodsy, resinous incense fragrance with frankincense, myrrh, labdanum absolute, oakmoss absolute, aged Indian patchouli, Texas cedarwood, Indian sandalwood, ambergris. ”
I have been loving so many scents with oakmoss lately that I finally ordered some diluted oakmoss oil to add to some of my homemade rose blends. I am a rose freak, so most of my oil blends feature rose. I am looking forward to seeing what oakmoss will do for a few of them. Also, I wanted to get some before it became totally illegal to obtain. (There, have I regained a little credibility back? '~)
I had a brief email exchange with Laurie back in the summer and she said she was still working on it, but I got no ETA. I said when it was out, I would go back and purchase some more samples and a couple of those 15ml bottles (such a great size for someone with a FB habit!) of my other faves from the line.
That's good then – I have two specific woody phrases – “trapped in a tea chest” for a general woody aroma, and “poked in the eye by a splintery plank” for when the woody aroma gets a bit too lively. “Trapped in a tea chest on fire” would be for smoky scents like Timbuktu. Not my kind of thing at all! I notice that LT likens some scents to “pencil shavings” and “sawdust” which are clearly red flags to me!
Ah, whereas “pencil shavings” is automatic lemming for me. Love that smell!
I defy anyone to be all-knowing with over 1000 launches a year, LOL…I don't even try to keep track, I just report what crosses my screen, seriously.
Hey, what a great idea! Where'd you get the oakmoss??
I bought it online from one of my favorite essential oil sources, Nature's Gift. The diluted oakmoss is not expensive. If you are really looking for a treat though, try their wonderful rose oils. :~)
http://www.naturesgift.com
Thank you Vanessa! I hope she gets it right soon. I heart Gardenia!
Marge, from Nautre's Gift provides some wonderful descriptions of her oils. So even if you do not buy, I highly recommend perusing her site for information about perfume ingrediants. Her products are high quality and worth a try though.
I can state with a wee bit of insider info that Laurie is indeed planning on having Gardenia Musk ready around or before holiday time. And it is truly divine. It has the level of gardenia like in EL Private Collection Gardenia – right at the top before the gardenia burns off, but no tuberose. It is light to the body, but satisfying as well. It smells NOTHING like any other gardenia I've ever sampled. For those of you disappointed in scents like AG Gardenia and others that include more notes like honeysuckle or tuberose, this will be more interesting to you…..I was fortunate enough to be one of her testers for a sample before the final formula.
I think we can blame the delay on her increased business from NST posts and others the past month or so that have mentioned her frags. The curse of increased business! She handles her business, website as well as her scents, and tries very hard to give all her clients personal attention! What a gal!
I love Sienna Musk and have a sample of the WW to try. Also a nut about Laurie's rose fragrances. I have a bottle of Velvet Rose. Today I'm testing Rose Musc, and so far so beautiful!
Velvet Rose and Rose Musc are my favorites. I'm always wavering about picking up Vintage Rose as well….But I just love Rose Musc. I'm actually wearing it today – a remedy for a cold raining day on the east coast. The labdanum in this is just the richeset, warmest, coziest….To me it smells like you took some old rich roses and roasted them with labdanum. It is the most divine rose frag ever. The labdamum only warms up and grows richer with ever hour I wear it.
Thanks! Might have to do some shopping 🙂
Thanks for the info!
AnnS, I'm just loving Rose Musc as the day goes on. I need to learn to isolate the labdanum. Maybe tonight I'll do some exploring. I do know that I have several fragrances with this note. I also have a rockrose plant, so maybe I'll go tear off a few leaves and twigs and sniff them. I wonder if it's the right variety?
I can't say about your rockrose. After I fell hard for Rose Musc – the labdanum note really – I spent some time researching this. I found a few frags that boast it prominently, esp., Donna Karan's Labdanum. After smelling that, and a few others, what I discovered, is that labdanum smells differently when it is differently treated. Duh. Well, what I mean is because it is one of those woods, it can really change from warm woody to smokey woody, etc. Before I knew that labdanum was the cultprit in Rose Musc that I loved so much (and Laurie Erickson herself was very helpful to me to work that out), I actually thought what I was smelling was some sort of dry cinnamon aroma. You know how a dry cinnamon stick kind of smells? But not like sweet or wet cinnamon….
I think that it's the combination of the particular rose that Laurie uses and the particular kind of labdanum she uses that creates the mouth watering fragrance. (There could be other things going on here too with the musk, that I can't smell.) I understand that labdanum is sometimes interchanged as “amber” when it's listed as a note. If you wear your sample of rose musc for a number of hours (8+) – overnight even – the smell that you are left with is the labdanum. A number of times when I've worn this, the next day I'll smell the remainder and it is always the woody base, the labdanum. I hope this helps! I hope you end up loving it as much as I do.
Ann, it's very helpful! I've now had it on for about seven hours, and I think I do get something like what you are calling dry cinnamon stick. And it does remind me of the base in some fragrances that apparently call it amber.Thanks!
Thanks also Anne! I can't wait even more now that you describe it. I may just have to break the golden rule and buy unsniffed on that one.
Striking box design. The bottle reminds me a little of the “Calypso St. Barth” scents.
Last night I re-sniffed all my labdanum based scents. I used to always just think what I was smelling was amber, which was not so far off since they are very closely related. If it weren't for Rose Musc, I'd never even thought about it really. I can smell that whatever Laurie put together makes me think of (the abstraction thing) very dry cinnamon, even though there's no cinnamon in it at all.
I think that the labdanum in Rose Musc has a very warm labdanum wood accord that is not as smokey as it could get in others. It has a twinge of leftover incense, but not like you've been sitting in church. I don't want to imply that it smells like cinnamon, just similar to how very dry cinnamon (or for that matter very dry sandalwood) has that powdery, woody type thing going on, without being smokey or incensey. The labdanum she uses is very rich and warm which gives it that wonderful glow.
You and Haunani have got me so curious about the labdanum that I am going to put on my sample of Rose Musc right now and see if I can detect it too!
And thanks for the update on Gardenia Musk – have high hopes for this being the “ultimate gardenia” scent!
I am excited too about Gardenia Musk. It will be my new floral for next year spring and summer. I was really hoping that EL Private Collection Tub Gard would work for me, but I often have trouble with tuberose giving me a headache, even though I like the way it smells. I was terribly disappointed in AG Gardenia… Trish McEvoy Gardenia…..The Gardenia Musk trial sample I had was just divine. I am excited to smell how Laurie finished it off.
If you can just image how well Laurie treats her rose fragrances. She's doing similar for gardenias with the GM.
Sounds wonderful, Ann – and thanks for testing/finetuning the product for us all – it's a weighty responsibility! I was fine with TG, as for once the tuberose was really well behaved on me, but on my friend it was a complete scrubber! I thought Isabey Gardenia might have been “the one”, but that too was on the sweet side.
I was honored to test it, but had little to do with the finetuning. 😉 Laurie does all the hard work, I just told her what I smelled. (She works with a number of testers.) She has a vision for GM — really working hard on making it special. There is just so much detail, patience and science behind creating a fragrance. She is really a treasure. It will be worth the wait. I actually can't wait for the time when she'll have samples of the other new one she's working on, Lieu de Reves. It really sounds up my alley!
They are pretty!
I used to love being given the task of emptying the pencil sharpener in school – there is something about the wood scent with that spark of metallic graphite that I love.
Haunani and AnnS, I just bought — UNSNIFFED, the first time I've ever done this — a 15 ml bottle of Velvet Rose. The first 10 minutes after spraying were unpleasant; I kept smelling, especially close to my arm, a bitter, almost medicinal smell. (I don't think it's the bergamot.) 15 minutes in, I'm starting to get that wonderful “big armful of dewy roses” scent, but I still get the bitterness if I sniff my arm, lessening as time passes. Was this your experience as well?
I think I'm keeping this bottle anyway — I can suffer a little, for big armfuls of dewy roses — but I just wondered whether I was the only one to experience the unpleasant beginning. We'll see what husband says, since he's likely to be sniffing this one up close to the skin… I may wind up gifting my mom, the supreme rose-wearer.
(AG Petite Cherie was all crisp, juicy pear and peach on me, but on my daughter, the intended recipient, it was turpentine. Weird how things happen that way…)
Oh, yes, and got samples of Vintage Rose and Sienna Musk. I just prised off the caps and sniffed, but I'm looking forward to trying both of them. Thanks so much for the heads up on SSS. So nice — and so within my price range…
Have you tried the oil? I tried the oil and it was beautiful, very soft.
No, haven't tried the oil. Now that I've worn this twice, I'm discovering that I need to do the “spray a cloud and walk through it” thing. It's just so strong — on me — that even a gentle spray on each wrist is overwhelming. The bitter smell of the opening is much less with a lighter application.
Husband liked it. I found the “hint of patchouli” described in the notes to be “more patchouli than I really like,” but then I am a patch-phobe. Like I said, I'll suffer a lot for big armfuls of roses.
Update on my Velvet Rose: the bitter smell has greatly lessened and almost disappeared — wonder if it was a “new batch” at SSS that needed to mellow a bit in the bottle, or something…
Anyway, I can now spray my wrists! (Lightly, or the Evil Patchouli Witch garrotes me.)
Sienna Musk is really lovely. It does remind me a bit of Organza Indecence (without the vanilla), so I won't be buying a bottle, but you can bet I will be haunting the SSS website for more stuff to try. Gorgeous.
Thanks — I have a sample but am terribly behind on testing, will have to make time for Sienna Musk this weekend.