One morning last week I lay on the acupuncturist’s table, stuck like a pomander, trying to identify the familiar yet elusive note that carries Mary Greenwell Plum. It wasn’t plum — that much I knew. Maybe it was the lobotomizing New Age music or maybe the needle planted smack in the middle of my forehead, but the answer came to me all at once: Smuckers. Smuckers grape jelly, to be precise.

Mary Greenwell Plum hit the market in October 2010 and quickly became a must-sample fragrance. It had a lot of promising features: its perfumer was François Robert, accomplished nose and descendant of the legendary Guy Robert and Henri Robert; it was a chypre; and it was hard to find.

Mary Greenwell is a British makeup artist who made her start prepping a teenaged Brooke Shields for a Francesco Scavullo photo shoot…

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