Ponte Etereo

Love at first sniff. I bought my bottle in August and have been allowing myself to get more aquainted with this fragrance before writing a review. This is the quintessential scent of autumn, bottled. The entirety of the forest in fall is represented here -- dead leaves crunching underfoot, moist soil squelching with each step, and a gentle animalic purr representing critters scurrying behind fallen logs in order to stay just out of sight. Lots and lots of woods here, as well. Warm tobacco, cozy chamomile, and honeyed immortelle work together beautifully to bring sweetness. The rich, bitter cacao adds complexity. Something in the composition reminds me of a trail of smoke lazily rising up from the chimney of a home with a lit fireplace a couple miles away. It's likely the duo of cade oil and birch tar. Ponte Etereo is a kaleidoscope of oranges, browns, and yellows, always shifting, much like the foliage of a deciduous tree rustling in the wind. I'm so happy to have this in my collection.

This fragrance is so strong I can smell it from a couple feet away INSIDE OF a completely leak-proof sample vial. I kept getting whiffs of it and thinking “what smells so good??” It turned out to be this. @EPTrail is right, this fragrance commits. As you can imagine, if I can smell it inside of a glass vial, the sillage is incredibly large when it is actually worn. MUCH larger than what I would typically go for, but as with almost anything by Meo Fusciuni, I absolutely adore it, the quality is exceptional, and this went straight onto my want list.

Sweet baby Jesus, Jesús if you’re south of the border, last night I sprayed this in Tucson and my mija called from Casa Grande asking, “Papi . . . . are you wearing Mayo Fettuccini? Because I can smell it from here.” This stuff doesn’t project. It violates the laws of physics. Forget sillage my dear reader, this fragrance straight-up teleports and announces itself like a dead of night Amber Alert. For me it immediately smelled like it time-traveled straight out of 1987, skipped all modern perfumery theory, and said, “No cream, no sugar, no thank you.” This is an old-school, no-arc, no-journey perfume. It’s the kind that doesn’t evolve so much as it commits. You spray it once and it stays exactly where it started eight hours later, like Murphy Brown shoulder pads or a Cure synthesizer intro that never drops. There’s no top-note sparkle, no heart-note emotional growth, no base-note redemption for me. It opens, it declares itself, and then it stands there for eight hours like Patrick Bateman in a power suit explaining interest rates to you. If you wore this in the ’80s, people wouldn’t have called it “modern.” They would’ve called it “your signature scent” and assumed you owned a Saab, smoked indoors, and listened to Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence on cassette. There’s something weirdly comforting about that. I think I can taste the oils now. As a fan of Imprezzabile, I purchased a sample from Fumerie Parfumerie to evaluate it more closely. Ultimately, while interesting, it did not warrant a full-bottle purchase for me.

I am a Meo Fusciuni stan, so I took the risk and blind bought this, and I have no regrets. I got engaged in Portland, Oregon, so this is especially nostalgic for me. The opening communicates fresh, rain-soaked soil fertilized with coffee grounds. A menthol-like woody-aromatic note elevates the warm earth. This is for people who enjoy geosmin-type fragrances like Hermann A Mes Cotes Me Paraissait Une Ombre, Coven, and Prismhead. Slam dunk!

So lucky to smell this in person! I cherish my little sample and love to revisit it from time to time. Delicious wet soil opening, dries to an animalic patchouli. Not stinky from the animalic notes because it has a sweetness from the patch and amber to balance out... Feels very handsome and earthly, such a lovely piece of art!

The notes look insane, wow. I hope the bottle will be available on Meo’s website as Fumerie doesn’t ship internationally.