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

If this scent had a colour, I'd imagine it to be a silvery eggshell white, much like an actual birch tree. I don't have any hard and fast rules about fragrance, but I generally dislike aquatics, and to me there's a kind of limpid, stale creek water element to this that really turns me off. It's not completely unpleasant but I'm relieved to see other reviews saying it doesn't last long, let's put it that way

Surprised that there aren't more reviews here since last time I sampled this but I asked the brand and they say it's discontinued. Coming back to it now at the start of winter and I'm finding it a lovely, understated contrast of fresh, icy, citrus zest and earthy, dark musks. There's a special balance between the patchouli, with it's slightly chocolate-y damp earthiness, the guaiac lending it's own creamy smoked wood effect, and the musks that tie into the soft, almost vanillic tenderness of both of those things. A spiciness rings clear through the body and illuminates an almost barren, cold environment where I imagine dense forestry lies dormant under a blanket of snow. I agree with the reviewer below about having some kind of creek water impression, but I find it great actually, and now that I've gone through a number of other guaiac scents it's actually one of my favorites, despite it's lackluster performance. Unusually I don't think there's much actual birch in here? I can't tell. Anyways, at $170 for 50 ml it can't afford to have many points deducted against it and even though I'd love to catch small wafts of this throughout my day, I don't think I'd pay that much to experience it.

Birch is a beautifully rustic and dreary scent, perfectly evocative of a dark fairly tale forest where the ending isn't a happy one. Woods and patchouli are immediately evident, with ginger and bergamot adding an element of austere freshness. This is an emphatic Hansel and Gretel scent, inky, foresty, and suggestive. I don't know a thing about Icelandic forests, though this scent makes me wish I did. Either way, it's stunning.