Now that the Harvest Moon has come and gone, let’s talk about gourmands. Tell us…
1. Your absolute favorite gourmand fragrance?
2. A fragrance you’d like if it were a little less sweet?
3. A fragrance you layer to add a gourmand element?
4. Your absolute favorite dessert, or chocolate bar, or other sort of edible treat?
Or, as always, just talk about something else…
Earlier this month, I dove into the new fragrance line Hermetica. This week I took a step back to revisit Memo, Hermetica’s older “sibling” brand, and I sampled two fragrances that I hadn’t tried before — one new, one old, both developed for Memo by perfumer Aliénor Massenet.
The new release is Winter Palace, summarized as “Tea and Fire.” Its composition includes notes of grapefruit, dry amber wood, bergamot, benzoin, cistus labdanum, orange, styrax, tolu, vanilla, red tea, musk, tonka bean, lemon, maté and Gurjum balsam. Winter Palace has joined Memo’s “Artland” collection…
The background: French niche line Comptoir Sud Pacifique released Vanille Banane in 2003. At that time, the brand had a bit of a cult following for their various vanilla + fruit blends, none of which I cared for (although I still wear two early Comptoir Sud Pacifique fragrances, Aqua Motu and L’Eau du Gouverneur). I doubt I even tried Vanille Banane. In due course it was discontinued, then in 2018 they brought it back…
Are you a fan of chestnuts? If so, was this an acquired taste for you? I’ve been a chestnut-lover for most of my life, only because roasted chestnuts figured prominently in two family traditions that took place during the holiday season. One: my grandmother and my mother and I would go together to see the Christmas windows of Manhattan’s department stores, and my grandmother would buy me a small paper bag of roasted chestnuts from a street vendor, to eat as we walked along. Two: my grandparents prepared roasted chestnuts as part of the dessert course on Thanksgiving and Christmas, roasting them in the oven after my grandfather had made a small X or cross on each one with the point of a knife (to prevent them from bursting).
These happy memories surrounding the chestnuts, not to mention the chewy, buttery enjoyment of the nuts themselves, would make me want to try any fragrance with a chestnut note. But why do so few perfumes try to capture this sensation…
Bruno Fazzolari Ummagumma is a mess. For some people, it will be cravable mess. If you order cheeseburgers with bacon — and, come to think of it, why not mushrooms and a few slices of avocado, too? — Ummagumma might be your Holy Grail.
Ummagumma (pronounced “oo-ma-goo-ma”) is the name of a Pink Floyd album. It came from a roadie’s slang word for sex.1 Ummagumma’s notes include saffron, carnation, chocolate, tobacco, leather, labdanum, sandalwood, cedar, frankincense, tonka bean and vanilla. Can’t decide between a gourmand or an incense fragrance or a tough leather? With Ummagumma, you get them all…