Gorseland

Trying to unpack Gorseland is like trying to untangle a decades-old unkempt English countryside hedge: virtually impossible. The first to be trimmed away from the hedge is the fruit, and Gorseland has a lot of it. Underripe pineapple that’s more green than juicy, a good amount of Meyer lemon juice in that it errs more towards the side of sweet and fruity than hesperidic and sour compared to ordinary lemons, and finally plenty of Granny Smith apples. The green apples in particular during the opening are about the equivalent of burying your face in a pile of both freshly cut green apples and a mulch of green applewood. When the onslaught of fruit calms down, Gorseland shifts gears more towards the typical classic green perfume genre - but this is McCall remember, so No. 19 or Vent Vert this will not be. Gorseland goes more in the direction taken by Mal-Aime from Parfum d’Empire in that the hyper-pressurized green notes are not your classic galbanum-type notes, green woods, or anything of the like. But unlike Mal-Aime, there is absolutely no space in this perfume whatsoever. I am finding it impossible to pick apart individual notes because McCall seems to have taken every “green” aromachemical he could get his hands on and fed them into a particle accelerator to become infinitely dense like a collapsed star. This perfume is just one massively dense singularity. One note I am certainly able to pull is the elderflower, an aroma which I love and is a staple ingredient in my home bar. That translucent floral honey note of elderflower liqueur that turns a cocktail from mundane tavern plonk into a tantalizing elixir for the palate swims in the tiny seams of all of these synthetics. The final skin scent retreats to the beginning albeit for much softer presentations of yellow and green fruit. I give up. I have no idea what I’m supposed to be smelling. But do I like it? Yes, actually, I do. It does actually smell quite good, quite unique, and it is certainly gripping my mind in the correct way. I have not been able to pull my wrist or the blotter from my nose for more than a few seconds without going back for another sniff, and yet I still wonder if, when, and how I’d like to wear it - and why. What is keeping me on the fence is that I’m not sure I am understanding who this perfume is; I don’t know what it’s trying to say or do, and therefore I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel or if it fits me. Imagine an eloquent actor reading a very well written children’s story, captivating and enriching and completely comprehensible, and then imagine a droning, loud, continuous, fuzzy and distorted extraterrestrial voice of myriad harmonies belting some completely unintelligible language from the voids of space. Gorseland is the latter. Though, I am listening.

wow wow wow!!!! extremely fresh and bright in the opening. it made me gasp. it’s like mushing up a handful of freshly sprouted leaves from a wild shrub and adding a bit of unripe pineapple. not what i was expecting at all, but i’m still pleasantly surprised. it doesn’t smell like a perfume, but rather wildly natural and scenic. it smells like a landscape, but in a refined way. it’s herbaceous and aromatic, but not in a medicinal or traditional sense.. it smells so young and crisp. sour crab apple, wild chamomile and green pineapple pave the way for a punchy kick of gorse. creamy and very slightly coconutty. green prickly gorsebush with its creamy yellow blooms tinged with zingy cannabis buds. amazing! it’s so hyper-realistically vegetal. this perfume is truly one of a kind and entirely genderless. it’s perfect for inquisitive artistic souls who embody a deep lust for the unknown. i live in ireland where gorse is abundant all year round.. so for me this scent is actually quite perfectly suited to my natural habitat. there’s literally a plethora of elder trees, geranium & gorse bushes right outside my window lol i could step outside and blend right in. i can’t wait to wear this on my next mountain hike!

I came in to a local shop and asked for recommendations for a fizzy floral like Zdravetz or Sundrunk - I didn't like the geranium or neroli in them so I wanted another flower - and another salesperson mis-heard me and enthusiastically brought forth Gorseland, which has the zdravetz geranium note. I protested "but I don't like geraniums!" and I'm so glad that they insisted "just try it!!!" It immediately smelled SO overwhelmingly familiar but it took me like 10 frustrating minutes to finally identify what it was: fresh pressed carrot juice!!! I happen to adore carrot juice, so sweet and root-y, ugh I'm getting thirsty just thinking about it! After another 20 minutes I was able to relax my perceptions enough to appreciate the other notes: a calming herbiness, a light floral, perhaps even the geranium but I didn't mind at all. Of all the samples I tried, Gorseland is what I ended up wearing out of the shop. It's a very unique and wearable composition and I'd love to experiment with it in different environments. Lasted about 6 hours on my skin.

Reviewing a sample from 2024. Gorseland was launched in 2022. Gorseland is fresh, sunny and herbal. This opens with sweet citrus and fresh apples on a dry herbal base. It continues tropical smelling fruit ? pineapple in the mid with a touch of neroli. I have not smelled wild gorse but apparently it smells like coconut, often with undertones of vanilla and almond. It is here if you look for it. The cannabis base is light, herbal and a bit sour. In most cases, fruit + sweetness is a no go for me but here they are so well balanced with a realistic natural heft. Not fizzy synthetics or girlie at all. Quality- excellent Unisex Performance- very good Fresh, rich, fruity and almost tropical unisex fragrance. I am surprised that this is at all polarizing as it is fresh and interesting with no off-putting notes - relatively tame for such a niche fragrance house. One of my favourites from Jorum along with Paradisi, Highland Rose and Pony Boy. 8.5/10

Gorseland - what a strange and wondrous journey through the wilds of the Scottish countryside you are! Some of the notes in this eccentric creation read like ingredients one would only find in the fairy kingdom where the fairies of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" reside: milk-vetch, catchfly, woodruff, gorsewood, gorseflower, and zdravetz, among other equally intriguing notes. Euan McCall is a super interesting perfumer and one whose work doesn't need to follow trends, but represents true artistry. Gorseland is the antidote to 'department store perfume': it has a rawness to it; the smell of vegetation, brush, thistles, damp meadows sprinkled with a few delicate yet hearty tiny yellow flowers, and windy grey skies with a storm blowing in off the coast. This is a nature-lovers perfume. Gorseland is a stunning portrayal of the raw beauty of Scotland, and every time I wear it, I'm immediately transported. Amazing creation!!

My favourite from Jorum. This fragrance is happiness, joy, and sunrays dancing on my skin. It instantly makes me feel euphoric and energised. I love gorse, it's one of my favourite plants!! Kush note is very comforting, sweet, and almost creamy. This scent reminds me of the sun, summer, laughing out loud, being outside all the time, joy, running around and sweating in the sun. It is definitely for someone with a quirky, bubbly personality - and it goes amazingly with my dungarees, braids, and Crocs - but also a beautiful, elegant, floaty summer dress. It's very versatile and definitely a spring and summer daytime scent (especially when the sun is out). I absolutely fell in love and left the studio with a beautiful, yellow bottle 💛 I think this might be my signature. This is my love and excitement for the spring and summer months, long escapades, and sharing joy with loved ones, captured in the bottle. Love 💛

Official notes according to Jorum Studio's website: Impression: Pineapple weed, Neroli oil, Chamomile, Gorseflower, Crab Apple, Lemon oil, Astilbe and Lavender Absolute. Fade: Gooseberry, Milk-vetch, Elderflower, Catchfly, Woodruff, Gorsewood, Zdravetz and Kush. Now onto the review: This isn't for people who want a sweet floral as it almost smells like freshly cut grass possibly due to the note of pineapple weed but for anyone who's into that type of scent, this is for you! This is also STRICTLY, and I emphasise this for a reason summer, because this is not a year-round scent at all. Eventually it starts to smell like melon to me for some reason? There's quite a lot of notes in here I've never heard of before so I don't know what those smell like but it's a very mild hint of melon in my opinion. Oh, and by the way, the apple note doesn't make this smell like shampoo which is a first for me!

I would equate Euan McCall to a landscape painter. His perfumes paint a beautiful and realistic scenery for me. As someone who is not from Scotland, I can still experience this perfume through nostalgia and recollection. Gorseland reminds me of the flower shops outside temples back in India, where a ton of fresh flower petals fall on the wet ground and they release their beautiful scent after being trampled upon and bruised. It smells like fresh leaves crushed between my fingers. It is this "wetness" the perfume offers right away that takes this floral, fruity, herbaceous composition to a different level of realism. Do not underestimate its sillage, it can scent a whole room and it has gotten me a few compliments. Will wear it for summer and spring but also love it for a wet monsoon season.

Green, gorgeous, and aromatic! I remember crushing the leaves of an angelica plant in the high country of Northern California and discovering a similarly sharp, almost medicinal scent. This is not the emotionally-unavailable, abstract formal green of Chanel No. 19 but a sunny, chaotic bramble. You might like it if you enjoy other realistic vegetal depictions like Philosykos and L'ombre dans L'eau, but Gorseland is utterly unique. Unlike other reviewers, I find it clean and bitter rather than sweet, and I don't understand the comparison to Byredo's Pulp, (which smells to me like overripe fruit and flowers on the verge of rotting.) I wasn't sure initially if I wanted to smell like shrubbery, but Gorseland grew on me, if you'll excuse the pun.

I am so obscenely fascinated with people who find this scent SMOKY. Smoky??? Her??? This is a fresh, sticky yellow fruit scent to me: gooseberry, yellow apple, yellow pineapple, yellow lemon. Like all the Jorum offerings I've smelled, it's a little "fresh" and outdoorsy, a little challenging, but singular in vision. I keep kicking myself for not buying a bottle while I was on my honeymoon in Edinburgh. One thing I don't get much from this is the tea and cannabis–the tea a little maybe, but I think what I get more are all those lovely florals: lavender and geranium and such. Cannabis I don't get at all, but it's a note I think I need to train my nose for more, maybe; I often struggle with pulling it out of alleged cannabis scents.

Symphonic happiness & euphoric too-much-ness in fragrance form. In the heart I begin to notice a slant-ways expression of gorse, which is the note I was looking for when I first tested this perfume (the name..) but the top is sun-ray bright, super complex and not-yet-gorse-like, something like orange-juice and pineapple but not edible. When you dry chamomile flowers (e.g. for tea) they smell dusty and herbal, hay-like but more abstract and higher-frequency, a smell I love in e.g. Gucci Memoire d'une Odeur. But if you pick a fresh chamomile bud and crush it between your fingers it also smells a little like pineapple weed, ie like ripe pineapple with fresh, buzzy herbal green undertones. Lovely to come across this in a perfume!

What a joyous scent. Fresh green stems and delicate yellow flowers devour a sunlit valley, and there you are lying amongst the dirt and the trees and the flowers. A breeze sweeps your curls into the sky and fairies dance in the sun, their delicate wings reflecting light on you below. You pick up your grass stained skirts and begin to dance. This is not a tame hothouse floral scent. This is the wild, green, bitter yet sweet smell of an unexplored fairy glen. The fairies tell you such pretty things, but you wonder perhaps it would be best to not eat anything offered. Afterall, sometimes everything is not quite as it seems. This scent is such a beautiful balance between sweet, ethereal and bitter, earthy. It's enchanting.

A completely unexpected discovery, and quite complex I'd say! Just seconds after spraying, I smell freshly cut (bitter) grass (I guess the cannabis accord is playing here, which I don't really like), but after a minute - a fresh carrot (?!) appears, and after about 5-10 mins the scent softens - flowers, chamomile, fruits. When sniffed straight from the bottle, it doesn't even smell very pleasant, is quite bitter, but after a few minutes on the skin... Oh my god, such a good combo! Meadows, fields... In general, I really like it. The smell doesn't get annoying during the day and lasts for a long time.

This is such an interesting scent. Starts off VERY strong, with cannabis and citrus notes coming to the front. Weirdly my friends and I got a pineapple note? We agreed it smells like an edible, in a good way. I wore this on a spring night to a goth/new wave club, spritzed some on my friends, and we got a million compliments from people on the street and inside the club (it lasts even after hours of dancing!). I think Gorseland would stand out even more on a hot, humid summer day.

The initial impression might be a bit scratchy, but once you move beyond that, you're greeted by a truly distinctive and captivating aroma! It's both starchy and sweet, reminiscent of fig scents. It almost evokes the same comforting aura as scents like Philosikos, yet I find myself gravitating more towards this one. The price point is quite reasonable too. I believe this will mark my entry into the realm of "unconventional" perfume purchases.

Love this one. Gorse is a yellow flowering plant closely related to broom, and it comes through like heavy pineapple rind here. Almost tropical but not too sweet. The lavender is smooth and balanced really well in this. Overall this is a sweet, herbaceous, potent fragrance, that to me smells like it has a similar backbone as Jorum's Pony Boy from the same collection. Unisex and very wearable if you're in your druid era.

Delicious and very clever. The initial smell is a sharp, pungent blast of green aromatics (I asked about this in the studio when visiting and was told that the inspiration was memories of drinking beer on Salisbury crags - been there!). On my skin, this then faded into the pinapple/coconut smell that gorse tends to produce. As an extrait de parfum, it is strong and the projection seemed reasonably potent too.

Complex and smooth. This was delightful to wear. Signature scent worthy. Bought it at first try in store. I wore it again as I was gardening outside in high wind, and I thought someone was smoking/vaping really nice smelling smoke, but it was me 😂. Note: I like freshies/blues, and normally dislike heavy/smokey fragrances. But I still enjoyed this.

I love to be a little shocked by a fragrance, and Gorseland really got me on first whiff. A particular apple opening - suprisingly just the peel, vaguely fermented. While I’ve never visited the highlands or even heard of half particular notes described, it brings to mind neglected weeds and herbaceous dry grasses stirred and crushed underfoot.

Very unique composition that is green, sharp and fruit-forward with sour-green apple, and berry in the foreground. I don't think my pallet is sophisticated enough to pick up the notes of chamomile and cannabis, but it appears other reviewers took note. Overall, this reminds my (untrained) nose of a floral take on Byredo's Pulp.