The Forest Reverie

First off is something piney and bitter with a tinge of smokiness. I have no idea what opium is supposed to smell like (poppies... ? :v) but the smoke is definitely there. Looking it up here, it's apparently dry and a little powdery with 'balsam touches'. Perhaps that's where the pine is coming from then? Along with the trees in the forest, that is. Thankfully I can't smell anything powdery on me, though it was a little bit present in the bottle. About five minutes in, something a little sweeter pops up. And then, 10 minutes later, the flowers and grapes are beginning to come through. The grape, as others have said, is not sickeningly sweet or fake and just provides a nice fruity sweetness to the smokey piney mix. The grapes aren't really wine-like to me, so I'm surprised that a 'wine' note is what jumps out at people the most here. The pine eventually dissipates quite a bit and it becomes 'smoky grape', with a hint of floral in the background. This is definitely a journey of a fragrance! The name is definitely apt. There's something ancient and mysterious and magical about it. Anywho. At the half hour mark the pine is sometimes making some surprise cameos and I'm catching a little bit of the dry/powdery aspect of the opium. After about an hour, I'm catching whiffs of cypress. Eventually, the scent transforms completely from heady, smokey and mysterious to calm and slightly sweet (cypress and a hint of floral with a teeny bit of the grape and smoke still there). Coming down from a high. I'm a fan of forest smells anyway, and this was a really cool twist on that genre. *edit* six hours later and it smells a lot like a typical men's cologne, but in a quantity I can actually deal with instead of that Drakkar Noir-type overwhelming sneeze-inducing sorta nonsense. Weird. But perfectly acceptable for me.

It's interesting and then not interesting. Cool toned. Smokey/incense. Quite woody, as is mentioned in the reviews it's 'piney'. Doesn't really do anything for me, it's quite fresh, leans masculine, smells kind of like a car freshener. I don't hate it though, it's just okay, not really that interesting in the long run apart from the concept. "A sunlit ancient forest, dotted with wild roses, grape vine, and queenly lilies, clothed in swirls of opium smoke." If I can keep this in my mind, I enjoy it a lot more. 5/10