SOTD: Lorenzo Villoresi Yerbamate

Some of my favorite scents for winter are based on notes that fit the season - smoke, amber, wood, musk, leather, and rich sweet foods. And some are based on summery notes, giving me what I don't have and am longing for - fresh flowers, green grass, sweet fresh fruit.

Yerbamate straddles these two positions, and does it very well. It has the sweet grasses and herbs and flowers of summer, but they're dried, with the more concentrated, spicier scent that comes with drying. These herbal, tea, and resinous notes are the remains of summer that can be enjoyed in winter.

Today, this seems more satisfying than those fantasy fresh-fruit scents, because it doesn't taunt you with the impossible. Yerbamate doesn't inspire a longing for the fresh dripping peach that you can't have, but for things - tea, or herbs, or ginger cookies - that you can.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Fragrantica and Basenotes and WAFT and SmellyBlog and Eiderdown Press and Confessions Of A Perfume Nerd and I Smell Therefore I Am.

Link Roundup: An interview with Lorenzo Villoresi, from Now Smell This.

Edited to add to the roundups.

Photo: By I. Sacek, Senior. Wikimedia Commons