Without Words

Cherry liqueur chocolates On paper, it should smell like a pompous floral with a prominent rose (AZ uses two different types of roses here) and jasmine. In practice, it smells of cherry liqueur chocolates; Mon Chéri, if you will. I think that the confectionary feel comes from the said roses that are of a jammy, fruity kind, almonds and cognac. Whereas sweet, absinth-like wormwood + labdanum give it some aromatic dark-chocolaty undertones. It's a deep, dark, gourmandish fragrance that would suit perfectly a more mature lady.

Without Words began for me as an explosion of almond and what I am perceiving as the rose. I also got hints of green pepper initially. The rose seems darker than most roses, almost black. I remember also sensing some labdanum in there as well. It stayed fairly linear on me and become a little too complicated to discern after a few hours. I sprayed this on some paper and there I got the impression of a chocolate covered cherry, which must’ve been the almond and rose. But it did smell very nice in retrospect.

The start is sharp and bittersweet, with two duettos at once. The first is an almost unbearably bitter duet of bitter wormwood or absinth and bitter almond with it’s prussic acid poisonous attractiveness. It sends an immediate impulse of sharp freshness. The second duet – jasmine and davana (also a kind of wormwood, but rather sweet and fruity) . This one is quite another matter: davana calms down jasmine’s extravagant sweetness and all this turns into some kind of dried fruts with relaxing, almost viscous smell. Maybe because of peculiarities of my own perception or maybe it has been done on purpose, but these two duettos are constantly swirling around, and give almost a vertigo effect – one moment it’s bitter and sharp, the other sweetly-relaxing, then bitter again and so on, and on, and on. Pure delectation... After a while, when both wormwoods fly away and you’re left with almonds and jasmine, the main voice advances – a rose. No, no! – THE Rose. Unseen untill the right time, it opens just in front of you, like in a time-laps movie. Eventually the picture becomes clear enough to see even the land in which this rose grows – almost a desert, even a heat haze is rising on the horizon. In spite of everything: the lack of water, the heat, the drying desert winds,- the rose is alive and blooms in full strength. To see the evolution of this very perfume could become quite an experience, but all the same you’ll deeply need to watch it again and again. (a lyrical digression : Do you remember a short serial “Merlin” with Sam Neil as Merlin and Martin Short as Frick? There was a scene when Frick was given young (future king) Arthur a lecture on magic “The third and the most powerfull degree of magic is "the magic of mind" (could remember not quite correctly – it was a long time ago, but still you have an idea) It needs no words, no gestures but THE WILL ALONE” – and that is exactly what I feel smelling this perfume, so affecting, touching and wonterfull it is) A minor word of caution! The perfume is tricky as well as enjoyable. It’s behaviour sometimes is hard to predict, especially the rose heart – there were times when while expecting this dry warmth after all the wormwoods, I got ... an autumnal garden full of wet fallen leaves. Probably the magical moment is in the very transition from artemisias to the rose heart , because each time I had been given a garden instead of a rose, I was inattentive, distracted by one thing or another. Not that the garden itself isn’t beautiful, it is absolutely marvellous, but still be prepared!