SOTD: Parfumerie Generale L'Eau Rare Matale, and a minor tea roundup

This is a tea fragrance, but it's not redundant with any other tea fragrance that I've tried. It's much darker than the bright, sugary American South iced tea of ElizabethW Sweet Tea. It's missing the floral and green tea notes of L'Artisan Parfumeur's The Pour Un Ete, replacing them with darker, stronger black tea. It's far less friendly than the warm, affable, winter-spices scent of L'Artisan Parfumeur's Tea for Two, and more bitter than the bright sunshine of L'Occitane's Bergamot Tea. It doesn't have the pleasant herbal meadow notes of Lorenzo Villoresi Yerbamate or the soft, creamy florals of Hermessence Osmanthe Yunnan. It does have a very close relationship, to my nose, with Parfumerie Generale Harmatan Noir, which I've already discussed in embarrassingly rhapsodic detail.

It's not particularly eager to please, and I seem to fall for that kind of fragrance. It has an uncompromising, medicinal-but-all-the-same-pleasant edge that reminds me of... OK, I was going to say thyme, but I went to LuckyScent to read the list of notes, and I see sage. Yes that's what I'm smelling.

My limited expertise in teasing out notes is no match for the rest of this one. There's tea, of course. And a tangy note that takes the role of citrus with tea, but isn't citrus - maybe it's the bergamot, mixing with the sage. "Burnt woods" is listed, and I do indeed get a charred note - not sweet woodsmoke, but bitter burned carbon. It claims to include white flowers, but I don't get the faintest trace of this note - to me, it's entirely non-floral.

It's one of my few season-independent fragrances - in the winter I rarely want a "refreshing" fragrance, but this is an exception. This is a solid favorite, one that I would wear quite frequently if I weren't constantly sampling.

Oh! Review Roundup! This is reviewed at Perfume-Smellin' Things and Now Smell This and IndiePerfumes.

There's also, by the way, a related fragrance called Hyperessence Matale that's said to tweak the proportions a bit, away from tea and toward the flowers, bergamot, pepper, and so on. I intend to smell it one of these days, but I don't really want less tea, so I'm not waving my arms too frantically to get my hands on it.

Photo: By Editor At Large. Details and license at Wikimedia Commons. Click for details.

SOTD: Parfumerie Generale Harmatan Noir (And L'Eau Rare Matale, and The Grass Is Greener)

I want this. It would be wrong, because I already own L'Eau Rare Matale, and they're very similar. But I still Want.

They're both tea and crushed stone and sun and water and wind. And they both yearn. But they're not the same.

(Warning: Rhapsodizing follows.)

L'Eau Rare Matale is sitting on the gravel bank of a stream fed from melting snow, dabbling your feet in the shock of the water. The light flickers as the leaves move in the breeze, and you're leaning your head back to catch just a little more sun on your face, to dry the splashes and feel your skin warm. There's tea, icy  and stern. L'Eau Rare Matale glories in the cold but still yearns for a little more sun, a little more sweetness.

Harmatan Noir is resting in the shadow of a boulder in the desert, the sun shimmering-hot just a few steps away, the sand still warm against you. You sit very still, waiting for the hot wind to cool the sweat from your skin. The only water is a little tea with sugar and mint, still warm from when you brewed it, not as much as you want but all the more precious for its scarcity. Harmatan Noir yearns for coolness and water and brighter air, while still taking pleasure, catlike, in being soaked in heat.

Harmatan Noir yearns for L'Eau Rare Matale's world, if only for a moment, and L'Eau Rare Matale is just as eager to change places. And when I wear one, I want to smell the other.

Review Roundup: For Harmatan Noir, Legerdenez and Perfume Posse and PereDePierre and Perfume-Smellin' Things. For L'Eau Rare Matale, Now Smell This and Perfume-Smellin' Things.

Photo: Flr0002, Wikimedia Commons. Click for details.