Sagan Dalya

In the Buryat language R. adamsii is known as sagaan dali (сагаан дали) and is used to prepare a certain kind of popular herbal tea for stress relief and immunity boost. It is found in Eastern Siberia, Yakutia, Transbaikalia and Mongolia. For me its a olfactory treasure - precious memories of my childhood summer breaks spent withs my grandparents in a small village lost on the ridge of the Ural mountains, surrounded of taiga (mostly coniferous forests of easter part of RF) - summers might be incredibly hot and dry -with a very intense an abs unique aroma coming from forbs and motley grass mixed with the smell of all kinds of spuces and siberian pines. Late summer evenings tea party on a porch or our wooden log cabin after banya(wet sauna) with honey and herbs from garden and nearby taiga , Probably Shawn Maher has no idea about all that and i know not what was hes intial intention but it works for me this way and its nothing but a pure delight and magic for me.

Some really interesting notes in this one. Sweet tobacco and immortelle. Something adds a sweet peach/apricot accord which reminds me a lot of January Scent Project’s Selperniku. This is a great take on a tobacco scent, really enjoying this.

I must be honest. I've been going back and forth about what to say about these fragrances from Maher Olfactive. I have 5 samples I got from a few months ago and have ordered two more to see what my general verdict is. After sampling some indie brands such as Wesker, Rogue Perfumery, Papillon, Hiram Greene, Marlou, Prin, Siam 1928... sometimes it is easy to believe that independent houses are infallible by the rave reviews they get. Mine included. You can easily be spoiled by the notion that the creations from indie brands are superior based on ingredients alone because they have access to raw materials or aren’t a slave to trends, market research or focus groups. Therefore, an echo chamber of praise can sometimes surround the brand making the creators lazy and overconfident rushing new creations after their sudden popularity to satisfy demand. Even with the houses mentioned there are creations within them that are not perfectly aligned with my taste but that doesn't mean they can't speak to someone else's tastes or stimulate another person's memories. Every brand has a gateway perfume - a safe scent - that most can or will enjoy and then not so safe scents. Though talent can grant an indie perfumer entry into the industry, the problem of growth always can be a matter of an indie creator’s experience or lack thereof in the industry or limitations to perfumery knowledge. Both can be weighed upon after you’ve spent time with their creations but remain your own opinion. It is quite easy to make a victim out of experience and knowledge in perfumery. And here is the surprise, I will always be an advocate for such criticism as I believe it helps brands be better. I need more time to understand the style behind Maher Olfactive but so far, I’m noticing a similar overarching weakness in the brand. Maher Olfactive’s weakness is nuance. In other words, of the ones I’ve tried the ingredient ratios are mixed too thickly like the perfumer was forcing the ingredients to behave a certain way. I feel some of the ingredients were not understood in a serious way leading to the formula feeling overdone. The individual ingredients in Sagan Dalya as an example are not harmonious because they all smell complex leaving no one ingredient to truly blossom and show its own organic aromatic facets. Even though Maher Olfactive uses synthetics and naturals together I believe less heavy-handedness and more gentle nuances must be had in some of these compositions which is why certain accords of synthetics can help to provide balance while also giving complexity and proper emphasis to the main character note. But time will tell if Maher Olfactive will have the same fate as Imaginary Authors, House of Matriarch, Beaufort, Bogue, Parfums Sven Pritzkoleit or Fort and Manlé to name a few. Artistic but somehow forgettable... Definitely an “A” for effort approach to creativity as Sagan Dalya by Maher Olfactive is a study into the ingredient and material known as Siberian Rhododendron also known as Sagan Dalya. A note used by only one other perfume archived on this website. WOW! But frankly as it is blended here it is an unwearable experience for me as a perfume. It feels to me like the perfume was blended with only the goal of portraying the ingredient somehow losing focus along the way of how the perfume could be wearable. I do not know what I am smelling in this scent. It is a massively bitter and pungent fragrance that in the air does not change or have an alluring presence in its scent trail. It reminds me of a Detox or elderberry tea has been left cold in a neglected kettle. Lifting off the lid of the neglected tea pot you are met with an oversaturated and bitter brew that smells pungent, minerally and earthy like the smell of the dead dried organic material before it was dehydrated for tea. I do not believe any of the beautiful notes shown in Sagan Dalya’s breakdown are clearly distinct or play dominant roles. I do not perceive an accessible or intelligible tobacco note, and there is a floral ambiguity from Tagetes (Marigolds) and Immortelle that smells like it has not been tempered properly in the blend and gives the fragrance a rather boozy and pissy, green honeyed property that smells of a compost bin behind the florist. With all of these busy and jealous ingredients trying to play main character the Siberian Rhododendron gets lost where I’m still trying to understand what Siberian Rhododendron is actually supposed to smell like. The formula seems to be clashing, discordant in a way that heavily implies that the fragrance was not field tested in different seasons or maybe even outside of the studio. In short, a rushed feeling creation that is quite overdone and can benefit from a more refined attention to detail as the ambition, creativity and risk from the creator is clearly there, but the resulting blending in Sagan Dalya is at best a deep and unfortunate disappointment to me. What I really love about the brand is its ability to be "Out There" and take risk with its blends, working with foreign and exotic materials. I do not feel that there is anything pretentious about the goals of this house, its inspirations, or its creations. I would highly recommend sampling the Maher Olfactive range as there are some more decent compositions there like Treachery, Crystal Moon, Nefertiti, Tempo Rubato, and Sun Soaked and I will soon discuss the reasons why and their possible shortcomings, if any, as well. 7.5/10

Definitely warm and spicy with very interesting immortelle and tobacco. It is being compared to Slumberhouse Mond and there is a sense comparing these two - the general vibe is in the pretty same genre, both being tobaccos wrapped up in resins and spices. The difference is, to me Sagan Dalya has very clear and prominent tea note to it - maybe it is caused by immortelle or honey somehow, anyway I feel that tea on my skin. I love tea so it was almost an instant like leaning towards love. Longevity is way over 12 hours and the sillage is quite subtle, but it does project releasing a "whiff" sometimes. Very good to me.

This a beautiful BEAUTIFUL dark, brooding fragrance that works on so many levels. Getting a few niche label flashbacks -- Pineward, Olympic Orchids, Slumberhouse and even that one CDG scent whose name escapes me... Smoke, labdanum, immortelle and tagetes. At times it is TOO much with the tagetes, but, you know, sometimes it's good to have a bit of an unpleasant element in a scent as it provides a focal point for your concentration -- I dunno, that little bit makes sense to me (at the moment). Definitely worth a second go-around, possibly worth buying...