Santal Nabataea

Very, very, very special juice indeed. Got a tiny sniff of this on my skin from a pre-order tester at Les Senteurs in London - after being tipped off about it by an insanely alluring update email from the Mona di Orio list. It did not disappoint at all. The concept /marketing blurb is an outrageous froth of exotic-historic flim-flam about the ancient Nabataean spice traders of the Arabian Peninsula, complete with gorgeous high-res photography of the fabled carved city of Petra and so on, complete with references to archaic mysteries and precious, hard-to-source, ancient ingredients and all that jazz. Full retail price is absolutely terrifying, making you wonder if every drop of this had to be distilled from museum-grade antiquities hand-carted to you by camel from the desert. The hype implied a spicier, darker sort of blend than this is ... but I have to admit, grudgingly, that this is TRULY a luxury product and might even be worth it. Exceptionally individual and distinctive - absolutely NOT 'just another sandalwood but more luxury added', more like 'a whole different class, or many classes, above and beyond what you're used to when you hear the word sandalwood'. Very sweet, almost powdery, subtle and harmonious spicing, with the pepper and leaf and coffee adding juuuuuuust enough bitterness to make it bewitching, without ever shouting their names out loud. So for once, the orientalist-antiquarian blabber actually does have something to do with the scent; like Papillon's Anubis (an utterly different smell), this one really does conjure an impression of something archaic, historic, resurrected from centuries (or millennia) long past. Oh my ancient gods it's good.

This is a dance between an ultra-dry, spicy sandalwood and a glorious non-sweet myrrh, that will be finalized to perfection with the support of a dry, hay-ish, brown vetiver, and a hint of coffee. The whole blend will be rounded by a lingering, soft osmanthus note ('apricot'), but it's just for the balance: indeed, it is not sweet, nor fruity. Vetiver, sandalwood and anything related to incense are right up my alley, so I can unsurpsingly state that this sandalwood fragrance skyrocketed in my top 3 favourites of the genre - if not my absolute favourite. This manages to combines the spicy dryness of Profumum Santalum, the hint of 'myshroom' like in MPG Santla Noble and Le Galion 222, as well as a hint of roundness, like in M&B Indian Study. This is linear, and despite that, extraordinary. Really. A big 'wow' for me.

A beautiful fragrance with my favorite elements inside, like milky sweet sandal wood, precious resins, revitalizing and mysterious coffee accord, topped with heady powdery florals like oleander and incredibly juicy and lush apricot (smells like freshly chopped in here), I truly adore this sublime gourmand balsamic floral concoction, which reminds me of equally serene Garuda by Jul and Mad, also to the apricot ambery Immortelle Corse by Parfum d'Empire.

This is an almost bitter, peppery sandalwood with a coffee bean crunch. New dimensions reveal themselves if you spend more time with it; mysterious and elusive, I know of nothing that smells like Santal Nabataea. It has a peculiar kind of elegance that makes it a bit difficult to pull off for me; it's not formal necessarily, but seems to require a well-tailored outfit. Very much worth just giving a sniff for the interesting olfactory experience.

Best Sandalwood I ever came across. It is blended to perfection with these supporting notes. At first it feels a bit light but soon you will notice it lingers forever. Gently coming and going in quite a linear way for the Sandalwood. The supporting notes are dancing, swirling up and down from the Sandalwood as if to the tune of a comforting song. When I close my eyes I am in a state of calmness and composure.