Birch

Birch is a dark, dreary winter's day with dark wood and dark musks...it smells slightly antiseptic to me and I love that about it...perfect winter perfume...very woody, but there is nothing smoky about this one...

If anyone has a bottle they are looking to sell, PLEASE reach out

A near miss but it's taught me a valuable lesson - I always read "birch" and think "yes! it's going to be a woody forest lovely thing!" but it doesn't always turn out that way. There are plenty of really antiseptic/medicinal scents I love (Olympic Orchids Dev 4, a load of DS & Durgas) but this one has just some slight overload of birch resin which goes a bit aggressive and bitter on me - an acrid medicine too sharp and acid to swallow overall. But it does indeed smell natural and forest-y - it's just a forest with too much creosote! I recognised with a start that it's probably (a much weaker version of) the same pileup of black musk plus birch which made Nasomatto Blamage a hateful, hostile thing on me, even though I'd expected to love it. Maack Birch is a much gentler treatment than that and it soon mellows out fast, to become a gentler, clean-lined rough-hewn Nordic log cabin affair, but the first hour is well past challenging. So sour it made my nose hairs pucker a little. Also shrinks and dies too fast for the premium price. It's really nearly lovely and if you go for gloomy-woody-medicinals in general, this may well be beautiful for you too. If you want to hug every facet of the birch tree you'll be in hog heaven. But this is a very characterful, quite weird scent that's unlikely to be a crowd pleaser imho. So, note to self: beware of birch and don't blind buy this one.

Was hoping for something that smells the way Icelandic Birch Liqueurs and Teas taste. No such luck. I don't get anything very unique from this one. No doubt it will garner compliments, but it's no standout in my book.

First impression- this gave me this visual/image “I sit in a quiet and isolated wooden cabin during the winter. Snow falls in a huge soft flakes outside and catches on the naked bleached trees just outside the window. No fire is lit yet I am warm, comforted, wrapped in a thick blanket and most of all, I am unconcerned by what may come.” This is a drastic departure from my only other experience with Andrea Maack’s other fragrance I’ve tried Coven. Comparing these two would not be in the slightest bit fair or make sense; Coven is loud, brazen and supernatural green cloaked in an armor of moss and deep dark intensity that screams and refuses to go unnoticed. Birch however is of a different time and place; this is beyond soft yet I wouldn’t call it cozy. It’s wooden but not flat or possesses the same qualities that most woody aromas do; it simply just is. It sits on the skin and softly hums and gently dissipates into the air. Very light, very gentle; mostly wood and musk. If there is any patchouli or ginger, I’m not picking it up. After a few hours- absolutely gone. No slight woody scent, no musk. Nothing. Sillage and longevity- this is well suited for someone who likes a minimal, quiet, not long lasting or imposing scent. Both the longevity and sillage are super low. Would I buy a bottle- No; based on the performance alone. It is a nice fragrance when it lasts but that’s for maybe an hour if that. 3 words to describe this fragrance- solitude, serene, distant