And if you are a rose, I am a rose shadow

Isphahan

I am usually not shy with words, but I long hesitated to review Annette Neuffer's Per Fumum: A Sanctified Rose, probably my personal favorite in her portfolio of exquisite natural perfumes. Let me begin by saying that to me, in one way, it is primarily an incense scent, as the name suggests: aspects of olibanum dominate, noticably flanked by ever more palpable balsamic notes of benzoe, opoponax, beeswax themselves entwined with gentle woods and vanilla - typical of Neuffer's gracefully complex handwriting, every scent is woven into the others like in a fine calligraphy. As Luca Turin noted about Avicenna texture and structure become one in a finely honed design. Labdanum plays and important role, but it, too, blends perfectly into the whole rather than sticking out like a dusty black thumb, as is often the case - aesthetically intended in the stark Vendetta pour homme, for example, and somewhat more ineptly in a number of House of Matriarch fragrances.

Per Fumum is a truly impressive work of ornamentation as purpose that reminds me of the visual beauty of noblest Persian art and architecture and one would need to approach it all to closely to recognize the stunning fine detail, while its grandeur and unity is only revealed from a distance.

Alas, one questions remains: where is the sanctified rose? It is unmistakeably present, at the heart of it all, to be sure, and yet more like a silhouette borne of the many entangled lines and figurations than as a presence of its own.  "And if you are a rose, I am a rose shadow" wrote Sufi Master Rumi. No image, but a (more perfect?) circumscription, that is the secret of Islamic art. In the contemplation of this deeply fragrant beauty woven from nature and artfulness, like a temple in Isphahan (place of roses) words and pictures are not amiss, becoming superfluous. 

A Natural Gourmand for Gourmets: Chocolat Irisé by Annette Neuffer

How you perceive, classify and evaluate scents fundamentally depends your broader socio-cultural and personal biographical scent socialization. There is no doubt my high sensitivity towards monomolecular synthetic aromachemicals is owed to the abscence of most functional perfumery in our household: for decades we have only used unfragranced detergents, cleaners etc. and only naturally fragranced cosmetics and soaps. As a result I perceive much of the world and people around me as regular synth-bombs reeking of dihydromyrcenol, calone, ambroxan, ethylvanillin etc., all of which they seem hardly even to register. At such moments I sympathize with perfume prohibition in the workplace, though that will not eliminate the fascinating phenomenon of long-unwashed clothes still exuding „april-fresh“ wafts of fabric softener scent. Many of my fellow citizens, children and adults alike, seem completely desensitized when it comes to this olfactory overkill, while at the same time finding the natural smell of a body to be completely inacceptable and "unhygienic." I ask myself sometimes: what should be the consequence of the fact that all humans are principally entirely and intuitively capable of differentiating between monomolecular and complex natural scents, between phenethyl alcohol and rose oil? Considering, as a legendary Slow Food experiment showed, that children not exposed to unprocessed foods tended to prefer the synthetic aroma of strawberry yoghurt to the challenging complexity of a real strawberry, a sign of gustatory and olfactory impoverishment, of a brutal sensory limitation to engaging the complexity and sensory reality of the world. This is not so much an immediate health issue, but one of aesthetics and of aisthesis (humans as sensorily perceiving bodies) ; it raises fundamental questions about the nature of our being-in-the-world. Perhaps it is time to consider the question of naturals and synthetics (a difficult differentiation, but if you prefer: complex naturally sourced scents and monomolecules) in perfumery from this vantage point, rather than the misleading debate about allergies (which are just as likely to be caused by natural oils with hundreds of secondary and tertiary components than by synthetics).

Soooo....As Chocolat Irisé has once more proven to me, the fact that I detest with a passion the great majority of gourmand perfumes has nothing at all to do with the genre as such, but with its consistent cultivation of artificiality grounded in massive monomolecular overdosing. A good crème brulée can only be made with real vanilla pods, not vanillin flavouring, and a good gourmand requires a high percentage of natural oils with a complex olfactory spectrum. Sure, Jacques Guerlain's Shalimar contained vanillin, but it also brimmed with tonka, iris, 30% (!) bergamot, as well as jasmine, rose, birch tar, patchouli, sandalwood and more and more and more. The beauty of unobtrusive complexity!

And so we come to Annette Neuffers take on the oriental gourmand, Shalimar naturelle en cacao, so to say. The absence of synthetics and the quality of the natural raw materials means that balance and complexity reign sovereign here; the perfumer's talent ensures that the chocloate-vanilla soufflé does not collapse into olfactory porridge; and the all-natural compositon prevents outré displays of sillage and intensity. It is, in sum, wonderful. The opening is powerfully citric-floral, I get stronger „orangey“ impressions from the tangerine over the tart bergamot and more white-floral aspects than rose (which, however, rises a bit later). Cocoa notes come into play very quickly and prompt associations of old fashioned hot chocolate made from the real thing rather than industrial powder. A wonderful olfactory baldachin of floral notes unfolds supported by the cocoa-vanilla scaffold, with the gentle iris building a bridge between florality and vanilla sweetness. The smokey earthiness of patchouli also gently holds hands with that aspect of the oh so multifaceted vanilla, the rest of the base remains softly at the back. Close to the skin you can cherish the lusciously complex exotic pod that our culture has so unjustly turned into a signifier of blandness. The whole composition settles down after about half an hour to a wonderfully woven skin scent with a gentle aura - gentle in no way connoting feminine here, but really a unisex quality. I actually feel it is the nose-searing loudness of synthetic gourmands tha project a sort of misguided hyper-femininity of the worst sort.

Chocolat Irisé is true to its name, a beautiful, classy, but easily worn pleasure scent recommended to all lovers of Guerlinade and traditional hot chocolate, friends of natural sweetness and spice, and those who have wondered why the can't handle gourmands, even though they love a fine dessert.

This Gentleman is a Hep Cat - Annette Neuffer's "Hepster"

Cab Calloway | Source: pbs.org

"Your sound is beautiful - dark and warm," Wynton Marsalis said of Annette Neuffer's trumpet playing. Neuffer is not only an accomplished jazz musician and singer, but also a perfumer. As is typical of the indie scene that has emerged through the possibilities of web-based marketing, she is self-taught, having developed her art from a deep interest in commercial fragrances that lead her onto the path of experimentation and ultimately natural perfumery - less from any dogmatic stance, than from increasingly losing interest in working with synthetics. She has cultivated an impressive portfolio of fragrances at this point and "dark and warm" seem characteristic of her travels in scent as much as in sound - there is a certain emphasis on orientals featuring the deep balsamic, resinous materials of that genre blended with luciously warm florals, spices, as well as gourmandy notes: Arabica, Maroquin, Mellis, the duo of scents under the heading per fumum and the quartet dedicated to Avicenna, the great Persian scholar, as well as several others speak of her fascination with the Middle Eastern roots of perfumery. But her 2016 release Hepster walks a different, greener path.When I asked her about the background of this composition Annette explained that when she started making perfumes, she was doing so mainly for herself and was also lacking male guinea pigs as her significant other doesn't dig fragrance (WHAT???). Now that her line is in the world she realized she didn't have an explicit masculine (with the exception of "For Him" specifically created for a friend) and when she came across a high quality supergreen mastix absolute the idea for Hepster was born.

If you liked the black metal of Josh Lobb's Norne, you must try this sophisticated jazz bottled by Annette Neuffer | Source: parfumo.de

Hepster was a term coined by Cab Calloway in naming his ca. 1938 Hepster's Dictionary of the slang used among the black jazz musicians of Harlem, who were hep cats and hip to the jive (this vocabulary was adopted in various parts by the post-war Beats, Hippies - dig? - Funksters and ultimately Hip Hoppers - "yo, break it up"). So, the name suggests this is a fragrance for cool cats who "creep out like the shadow," i.e. come on in a suave, sophisticated manner and as you can see in the above photo, a hep cat like Mr. Calloway wasn't always running around in a flamboyant zoot suit but also came across as quite the dapper gentleman, when he pleased. I am not someone deeply immersed in the world of jazz (that would have been my Dad), but its imagined smell, to me, is one of the thick air of night clubs, suffused by cigarettes, perfume and alcohol. Hepster, on the other hand, very much stands in the dignified tradition of English and Italian gentlemen's scents of the aromatic chypresque kind featuring citrus notes, herbs, a touch of florals, green notes and a "dark and warm" woody-spicy-resinous base. When I was grasping for analogies while trying to figure out this beautiful creation I thought of Blenheim Bouquet or Crown Perfumery's Town & Country with their straightforward citrus-herb-pine axis. But Neuffer's composition is far more complex and dense and the use of mint, pepper, juniper, nutmeg and balsamic materials inevitably reminded me of Lorenzo Villoresi's mid-90s italo-orientals such as Piper Nigrum and Spezie. "Blenheim Bouquet reformulated by Villoresi" became my shorthand attempt at contextualizing Hepster - but not to be misunderstood, this is a fully, indeed highly original work (because, for one, Lorenzo never did try his hand at a Blenheim). And there is quite some jazz in it, after all.

Hepster comes on with a burst of sax, trumpet and drums. The citrus accord is green and complex - it is not, thankfully, the clear and smooth smell of organic bathroom cleaner or washing up liquid - the dreaded lemon pledge effect! Rather, it has a textured surface resulting from the complexity of bergamot and lime and the impact of herbaceous notes - the gravelly juniper and nutmeg, the judiciously employed mint, that adds edge, but never becomes blatant here, and the ethereal treble of black pepper. And then there's a lifted, transparent vibrancy and gently animalic quality running through this which reminded me of the brilliant effect of genuine civet in classic fragrances - is it the magic of the hyraceum? Alas, this is the kind of masterful citrus complexity that characterized miracles such as the beautiful Signoricci II (vintage), delivering the olfactory equivalent of Arabic calligraphy behind the purported simplicity of a citric-fresh cologne. Such intricacy is what makes a fragrance gentlemanly: a refined, unobtrusive elegance that never vulgarly displays and yet ineluctably suggests a deep structure of erudition, integrity, sincerity. It is the complexity of technical mastery hidden behind the deeply moving rendition of a plaintive melody performed with seeming ease.  And it doesn't end there. Very soon you are met by the heart notes and the balsamic base that provides, literally, a well-contoured body to the opening accords, adding further depth, and which corresponds beautifully to the warmth of one's own body (this is a great scent to apply while one is still steaming from the shower, the naturals just really come alive). 

Mastic Trees on Chios, Greece | Source: http://www.mysteriousgreece.com/monthly-article/chios/ecotourism-in-chios/

The green character of Hepster announced by citrus and herbs is confirmed by mastic and pine, which provide a decidely Mediterranean flair and add a refreshing boldness to the refinement ofthe topnotes. I only know mastic tears from Greek cuisine and have never smelled the absolute, but imagine it to be a very deep, balsamic green on its own that here blends wonderfully with the woody-green pine note (which features a new material from Robertet, Bois de Landes). The floral notes - iris, néroli and rose geranium - are masterfully tucked into the heart to envelop the powerful greens in soft creaminess, a wonderful example of harmonic contrast that the old English gent's scents used to pull off so well. At this point I wish Hepster would just continue forever, but then, it is what it is because it is a natural perfume. Only synthetic modulators and fixatives could extend this pleasure and I wouldn't want to pay the price of altering what is an aesthetically complete experience. My skin doesn't hold fragrance too well, but I do get a good ninety minutes of this phase, before it begins calming into a gentle ballad performed at the late-night bar by a laid-back jazz quartet. What you have for the next five to six hours is a calm, green woody-balsamic skin scent that makes you want to sniff yourself constantly. It's ultra-classic: incense, cedar, sandalwood, vetiver, patchouli, labdanum, oakmoss and hyraceum (with the green notes lingering on), but I cannot emphasize strongly enough the difference between a blend of these actual ingredients and a scent pyramid that lists them to describe ambroxan, santalol, iso-e-super and other synthetics. While these have their place in perfumery within limits, an all natural base accord is something very beautiful and special, all the more when it's so well crafted, and everyone should get to smell it as some point in their olfactory voyage. Nothing sticks out here in a coarse manner, it is a smooth pleasure cruise into the Aegean sunset. Speaking of which: if I wanted to match this perfume with a person, it would have to be Patrick Leigh Fermor, the brilliant Anglo-Irish gentleman-adventurer who travelled this part of the world so extensively and wrote so beautifully about it. He embodied and old world education and refinement that yet was cosmopolitan and eager to search out and engage with new places and people and this spirit of tradition and open-minded curiosity, the encounter of northern and south-eastern Europe no less characterizes the beautiful Hepster.

Perfume is Dead. Long Live Perfume

Classical Perfumery is dead. You hear this a lot these days, and contrary to Mark Twain, who could reply to his premature obituary that "the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,"this artform most likely is indeed as deceased as the famous Monty Python parrot .
The simple course of time with its inevitable transformations of tastes, the hegemony of accountants at the corporations who control 95% of the market, the interests of the aromachemical giants, and the regulatory policies of IFRA reflecting those interests have combined to make so many nails in that coffin over the last decades (honorable mention goes to the wreckless non-sustianable exploitation of natural resources like Mysore sandalwood, rosewood etc. pp.).  Anyhow, when the epitome of perfumist integrity Andy Tauer is creating Pentachords rather than a second L'Air du Désért Marocain one could cynically assume he is not just playing with concepts, but perhaps preparing for the future status quo of scent creation.
But... I do not want to play the cry-baby here insisting on being pacified with Vintage Sous-le-Vent and this won't be a reactionary rant (although I love a good reactionary rant if it's in the name of endangered cultural heritage rather than endangered privileges). I just think that the situation raises the question of where the art, rather than the business, shall go from here, other than down the drain. And I certainly hope that what is currently widely offered as "niche" is not the conclusive answer, because that is too frequently striclty business involving very little in terms of art. While most niche start-ups just seem to be hollow business plans serving as storefronts for generic products from Symrise, Givaudan or IFF, many of the great niche names seem to have entered a phase of stagnation. Lastly, little is to be expected of the grand old houses in terms of creative boldness, even less as they become firmly controlled LVMH subsidiaries. The vanguard will be found among small operators with a vision, be it one-person natural perfume houses or other kinds of rugged creatives who rise to the highest standards from a belief in what they are doing. And perhaps the good news is that these kinds of folks can more easily find audiences these days through web-networks, and that they have new exciting materials at hand to complement and enrich what is left of the traditional palette. CO2 extraction and the fractioning of naturals have yielded some fascinating results and while technology per se may not produce aesthetic advances, we all know the beginning of classical perfumery lay in the chemical revolution and the new methods of extraction and synthesis it yielded.
This brings me to Undergreen perfumes, a project launched by two French fellows, Patrice Cardenoso und Jérôme Bonnet, who hired Fabrice Olivieri of Trends Lab to create their two perfumes, White and Black. Since I translated their PR material from English into German, you may consider me biased, as well as competent to judge its quality, which I found problematic linguistically and in style. I wish even smaller houses would realize the necessity of investing effort and money into well-made, culturally sensitive translations of their ad copy - it represents them and falls back on them when producing undesired chuckles rather than an atmosphere of luxury and desirability. Undergreen does not hold back with bathos when celebrating its unique selling point: embodying a new style of natural perfumery rejecting "aromatherapeutic" "new-age" aesthetics for a contemporary, trendy niche-style while scrupulously emphasizing natural origins and sustainable practices. It reminds me a bit of Ernest Callenbach's "Ecotopia," a very American ecological novel from the 70s which fuses faith in technology and Yankee ingenuity with Hippie eco-counterculture. Or of Steve Jobs. Yes, fans of Apple aesthetics will love these perfumes, too. Now this sounds like and could verily be just another marketing angle in an increasingly crowded market of high-end perfumery, but to my nose, the concept actually works and is genuinely reflected in the perfumes. I do not know to what extent the naturals employed here are manipulated in spinning cone columns or the like, but the fact ist: Black and White smell like throroughly trendy niches, without sporting what I find obnoxious about thoroughly trendy niches. Black is certainly not nearly as saturnine as the ad copy may suggest. As someone reared on truly dark vintage scents I would class this as easy-to-wear and downright pleasant. It's a bit like a de luxe version of mat; very male with its black licorice notes - but in high resolution 3-D quality. Plus there's a nice phenolic "Islay Malt" birch (and Oud?) note. In sum Black is a moderate-to-light and very pleasant modern gourmand fragrance, which excels by taking a trendy melange of notes (coffee, incense, oud, guajac) to a higher level by avoiding the usual synthetic suspects.  As a classicist I could use more murkiness, skankiness etc. here, but that's not the point - it's that this is a well-made, beautifully smelling scent in a contemporary style. I'm impressed. The same logic applies to White. It's a white (surprise!) floral (jasmine, ylang, tuberose, orange blossom, iris are all there) of great transparency, spiced up with minty zest and coconut. Touches all the bases of hipness but goes on to score a home-run quality-wise. I think it beats nasomatto's Narcotic Venus to a pulp (although it's much less muscular).
In sum, I believe Undergreen are making a meaningful addition to the perfume market and one of the most interesting launches this year (note: I was only paid for translating, not for writing this - but in any event, smell for yourself). Next, the queen of transparency, Mme. Giacobetti should work for these guys (not to diminish the accomplishment of Fabrice Olivieri in the least). I'd love to see her rendition of a green fougère in this line.

jitterbug perfume from a garden of delights

Natural perfumer Anya McCoy is a witch, which obviously should be understood as a compliment. It doesn't require mentioning that her creations do not smell like typical synthetic-plus-natural products, but they also transcend the aromatherapy clichés of many natural fragrances. In fact, they speak of a deep wisdom about all manner of plants, as the herb women of yore passed it on from generation to generation. Thus witch (did you know the Royal Mail even features a lovely witch on a stamp? It's Nanny Ogg from Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld, a character worthy of emulation by all of us).
I like to believe that I would smell this wisdom in Anya's perfumes even without knowing about her magic garden in Florida, her ethnobotanical studies and long involvement in organic gardening. They have a certain "je ne sais quoi" that comes about when people genuinely and deeply live what they do ( I'm not being paid for writing this, though please note the samples were provided free of charge :-) ).

I'll be posting about several fragrances from "Anya's Garden" in weeks to come, but Pan deserves an article of its own. It brought a smile to my face the first time I smelled it and still does. Why? Well, for starters, it's a very nice, classic ambery Fougère made from superb materials. That's a good and rare thing and I'm giving bonus points to every perfume these days that will not clobber my nose with cheapo synthetic redundancies because the perfumer had no budget, no time or no more ideas (oh yes, I'm talking $$$$ niche here, not drugstore stuff).

But there's more, beyond the dusty green opening (cedar, hay, lavender), a strong, but really good, non-headshop patchouli that picks up on the dryness and builds a bridge to the gently sweetened beeswaxy drydown (but nothing here is sticky in the least). That "more" is the (billy) goat's hair tincture amply discussed by all reviewers of this scent, which makes the whole thing "Pan out" (cough!). It's not skanky - you have to deduct the droppings, pee and other barnyard details from the animal. This may be a rutty goat, but it is proudly-standing-on-top-of-Olympus-Mons-clean. It's not even erotically animalic (at least in an obvious way), as the homage to Tom Robbins' ribald novel Jitterbug Perfume would suggest, but really quite well-behaved  - definitely there, though, and certainly recognizable if you've spent time around hairy animals. It also seems to modulate the other notes and works nicely to harmonize them in Pan, as it perfectly connects with the coumarinic aspect of the lavender and the leafy-earthy patchouli. Pan can be applied generously, as sillage is rather moderate and it isn't too lasting either (the presence after an hour is very subtle). Great fun while it lasts though, just as those encounters with the horned God, and a beautiful perfume for men and venturous women which one should have around if only to sniff the bottle. My only suggestion would be to release a flanker (Pan-Demonium?) which would sufficiently dirty the original up in the direction of Jicky to create a flat-out erotic variant - a challenge when avoiding civet, but I really think Billy the goat is full of potential. 

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/PanandDaphnis.jpg)

Essentially Me - It Souks!

No, this is not an ego-trip gone sour, rather I'd like to share my impressions of the natural perfumes sold under this moniker by Alec Lawless. Lawless runs an essential oils business with his wife as well as creating bespoke perfumes and providing various perfumer`s equipment through Essentially Me.

A group of lucky basenoters will be sampling and reviewing the ready-to-wear perfume line and I'll be conveying my impressions here as I work my way through ten natural fragrances.

I must admit I have become rather turned off by the fragrance industry as a whole and see little hope for any improvement. The mainstream industry is all about pushing low-quality redundancy at whatever the market will bear while establishing ultra-expensive luxury lines selling what would have been considered a proper fragrance, no more, no less, in the 1980s at prices that start at about a month's worth of welfare payments and end somewhere around the price of a small automobile. Niche has widely degenerated into a fashionista racket with endless new style-over-substance editions of design-conscious flacons and silly brand concepts haphazardly concealing boring, primitive or simply more of those prefab industrial smells.

Paranoid IFRA regulations benefiting the aromachemical big players do not help either and it seems that the only pockets of resistance are small, often one-person perfume operations such as those of Andy Tauer, Dominique Dubrana, Mandy Aftel, Liz Zorn or Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, who are dedicated to preserving and enhancing the art and artisanry of perfumery, rather than merely making a living off of it.

This is a wonderful opportunity to delve into the olfactory universe of another such individual, and the first fragrance by Alec Lawless I have treid is called Souk.

Here's what Essentially Me says about it:
"This was inspired by travelling in the Middle East and India where there is much to celebrate from these ancient cultures. The haunting smells of the spice markets, the Arab love affair with the rose, fragrant gardens, precious woods, resins and incense. Sandalwood, frankincense and Cedar of Lebanon are blended with balsams to provide a complex woody heart. Rose Maroc, jasmine, orris and neroli bring floral tributes from surrounding lands. Citrus fruits, herbs and oriental spices bring nuance from the market stalls and the ancient mysterious opoponax suggests incense with help from frankincense and sandalwood. Deep complex and beguiling - the beauty is in the mystery."
http://www.essentially-me.co.uk/finished_fine_fragrances.php#souk

My thoughts:
Are you going to Scarborough Souk? Yes that's right, the green-herbal elements in this unisex beauty balance the balsamic-spice so as to create an English oriental, the two fragrant worlds coming together nicely in the rose, which is, after all, so quintessential to both. A pleasing alternative to the French orient smarting under the syrupy heel of that charming despot Serge Lutens.

Mecca or Monaco?

La Via del Profumo is the natural perfume studio of Dominique Dubrana, who crafts fragrance under the name of Abdes Salam Attar and is inspired by the mystic Islamic branch of Sufism. His fragrances have been hailed widely as transcending the traditional shortcomings of natural perfumes such as lack of structure, complexity and longevity. Even Luca Turin, who used to be quite skeptical about natural perfume, has given very high marks to Dubrana's compositions.

His latest "scent of the soul" was inspired by his trip to Mecca and is accordingly called Mecca Balsam. As part of the sampling/discussion group on basenotes for MB, I received a generous sample of the essence which I have studied over the last months. And I admit, understanding Mecca Balsam was itself something of a pilgrimage. I've revisited it again and again, as my sample permitted and from an initial discomfort and skepticism I have come to deeply appreciate it. I am, I suppose, a convert . To me Mecca Balsam is not soothing in the sense of providing complacent tranquility. It carries within it the whole spectrum of a pilgrim's path. Dusty, forlorn roads, rocky, forbidding terrain (the austerity and dustiness of dry resinous labdanum), the pleasure of being hosted by a gracious stranger (dry, but rich tobacco, sweet enticing tonka) the deep, sweet satisfaction of reaching the sacred destination and finding there: yourself (the divine licqourous wine of those amazing florals, soft, meditative frankincense interacting with the dry resins & the tobacco). The sum, thus, is greater even than its magnificent parts: rich, complex, distinct and yet with the typical subtlety of a natural perfume, or as Octavian Coiffan so aptly put it in his review, an archetypal oriental freed of excessive ornamentation.

The effect, surprisingly, is somewhat two-faced. Mecca Balsam does exude a spiritual quality worthy of its name and its creator's intentions. But make no mistake, it could just as well be employed to seduce those around the wearer in very worldly ways - like a subtler, more genteel Domenico Caraceni for, indeed, men of the world. The abscence within it - of the stereotpyical loud synthetic amber, of screechy metallic florals, of frankincense on ISO-e-Super-steroids - imparts it with a serenity and exclusivity that would make it grace a plain white pilgrim's tunic no less than the bespoke-tailored, gold-buttoned navy blazer and crisp white shirt of a yaughting millionaire. One can thus choose what sort of wealth one wishes Mecca Balsam to display - that of the pure spirit or that of the art of fine living. The latter may not have been part of Dubrana's vision, but it makes Mecca Balsam even more impressive and enticing as a work of fragrant art.