Zauvage

Very spicy on me, I don't get any rose. Natural and pleasant smelling.

„Zauvage“ will appeal to people who are searching for a dark rose & aromatic woody scent. To my taste, it’s absolutely unisex, it might even lean more towards the masculine side. On my skin I first get an intensive load of dark spices. Seems to me like a lot of smoky cloves, a good dose of black pepper and something intensively aromatic like allspice or maybe ginger. Whatever the spicy notes are made of, they are very dark, very strong and very smoky. I also detect oud and a touch of other woody and smoky notes, that may be a smoky cedar. So, after half an hour I am wearing this woody, spicy and rather dark fragrance that makes me think of dark leather. Pepper and a lot of wood to me usually create this type of dark shoe-leather smell. The rose takes it’s time to appear. When it finally does, it’s a mysterious dark rose with dark ruby petals. So dark, it conveys to me the image of a black rose, surrounded by these wafts of dark, smoky spices and woods. After 2-3 hours the fragrance gets a bit warmer and a tiny bit softer, but it keeps it’s darkness and wild spiciness up till the end. “Zauvage” is a dark fragrance, yet it never turns murky or too sombre. There’s too much life and energy in the scent. It evokes the image of a stormy night in the forest when the wind whips through the trees and stirs up the embers and smoke of a nearby campfire. While writing this I realize, the scent lives up to its name. It's really a beautifully "wild" fragrance.

Mesha Munyan is an independent perfumer based in Sequim, Washington where she runs a small farm where she grows and distills lavender, from which she makes her own botanical tinctures and oils. In fact, she’s a nationally recognized expert when it comes to lavender and lavender oils. Her line is small, but it truly runs the gamut, from the zingy, bright Yuzzu (featuring of course, the tangy Japanese citrus fruit) to the comforting Spiced Cocoa, to the lush, spicy, and ultra-refined Zauvage. Like many perfumers, she has a passion for raw, all-natural ingredients, and as such, you won’t find any synthetic aromachemicals in her perfumes at all. At the beginning of last year, I found myself starting to develop a love for roses of all kinds, form the simple soliflore to the deep, dark, spicy, mysterious, and animalistic. As soon as I saw Zauvage and its notes, I knew that I had to try the line, and especially this one in particular. The notes in Zauvage include: clove bud, black pepper cardamom, ginger lily, Moroccan rose, jasmine sambac, peru balsam, oud, and castoreum. Zauvage opens up with the slightly anisic note, but I can’t quite pin it down. It might be fennel or anise, but it smells like something in that family. Then you get the sense that you’ve wandered into a spice bazaar in Marrakesh: clove, cardamom, black pepper are the ones I think I can pick out safely. The anisic note and the spices come together to remind me something vaguely reminiscent of an apothecary shop. There’s some smoke and perhaps a bit of incense, too. At the heart, I smell spicy, austere Moroccan rose, but there’s also a very prominent jasmine sambac absolute note. My heart has recently started to flutter at the smell of jasmine, so I was really happy to find a rose perfume that was able to incorporate jasmine so seamlessly. Everything sits on a beautiful base of dry cedar and oud. Being a natural perfume, Zauvage is (according to the rumor, at least) not supposed to have a long life, but it performs very well for me at a solid six hours, with perhaps a couple of hours of room-filling sillage. Whoever said that all-naturals don’t perform as well as mass-marketed beasts-in-a-bottle should try this. And needless to say, if you appreciate what a master of natural perfumery can do, the 100% all natural factor is just one more reason to appreciate it. Mesha told me that she called this fragrance her “hussy,” and I can easily see why. In a world full of sugar water trying fly under the radar as perfume, Zauvage sets a standard for rose perfumes. It’s different, and boldly different. Scents like this one really make reviewing worth the effort, and make me want to become a better reviewer. This is perhaps the fourth thing on my fragrance shopping list for Christmas, and it’s only the second week of February ... oh, brother.