Gristmill

This is one of my favorites from Pineward (and I'm a fan of many). It's a cedar centric woody amber with just the right touch of industrial grit, but that description alone isn't doing it justice. Something about it hits me right in the gut and heart such that every time I've worn it I have known I would eventually get a real bottle- and today I pulled the trigger along with Eldritch. Both of them are what I would guess are some of the less mass appealing ones in the Pineward line, but if you're among those that connect to them you will really connect. Big thanks to Nick for offering reasonably sized bottles with formulas strong enough to make the price per wear a good value proposition.

This is a woody and nutty scent with a some ambery accords. This opens with a very prominent mahogany note with the smell wooden cedar planks and sawdust following. It smells very much like freshly cut wood but the woods don’t feel dry, they have some creaminess to them. The sawdust is actually a really enjoyable powdery woody note. The walnut note creeps in there adding some slightly sweet nuttiness to the scent. I get warm labdanum in the dry down and this is a note i typically don’t enjoy but i think its done well here. It’s warm, ambery, even slightly smoky. I love how extremely woody this scent is without feeling redundant or boring

Gristmill is remarkable in, as a few other reviewers have noted, capturing the oily sense of nearby hot machinery, in addition to fresh sawdust, with a distinct nutty-walnut underpinning that keeps the top notes from being screechy without veering anywhere near gourmand. While this isn't my favorite Pineward from a strictly hedonistic perspective (though I still like the overall impression very much), I love it for being so complex and well-blended. Performance-wise, Gristmill wears like Pineward's spicy fragrances -- moderate projection and a solid 8-ish hour wear-time, and darn near eternal on clothing.

I love Gristmill very much. It's my favorite scent I've tried from Pineward so far and I'm considering a full bottle. The sawdust note is very accurate. It has the slightest sweetness to it that you get from freshly cut wood, but no more than that. The one thing that's driving me nuts is that I (and my family) get a very strong tobacco smell from it. I haven't seen a single person mention it in a review. Am I going crazy?

An absolute love at first smell. It’s whistful but not delicate which is a hard combo to pull off. It reminds me of the clear light of fall and chopping wood for the winter.

A very pleasant unisex perfume. There is an immediate pleasant woody scent, I really like it, the notes here are really natural. 8/10

it must be known that this scent is inspired by the mini-series Over the Garden Wall! I like leaning into its inspiration when I think of it, I even think it might not make much sense as a scent without knowing its context - don’t expect sawmill. It definitely smells a tree pressing mill tucked away in the forested mazes of a colonial new-england purgatory. Mysterious, if not a little scary. If you’re a NE local, it might bring up memories of fall field trips to Sturbridge Village- The oak leaves underfoot have been tirelessly tread upon, all the re-enactors are wearing leather, you’re sucking on maple candy from the gift shop, and you’re coming up on the old kiln next to the pottery shed (are they burning rotting wood in there?) Airborne Armadillo is right about this one tugging at the heart strings- especially if you’re nostalgic for the show, or the experience described above.

Teehahmed Nailed it. This is literally an old sawmill scent with the odor of the lubricant and grease with sawdust from different woods, not just cedar. I am not aware of the mahhogany scent but probably there is some of that. Not sure about Walnut either. I think walnut wood is relatively mild scent or no particular odor. Ive worked walnut before. So... this is what you'd smell if you've been maintaining the sawmill's machinery and exposed to a lot of wood dust and oil. This is a level stronger than murkwood in terms of longevity and sillage.

This is a nutty, oily sawdust. It's not just the sawdust but the machines - the chainsaw, the wood saw, the faint aroma of gasoline in the air after you've filled them. I've been on the hunt for a perfume that bottles up that smell of fresh cut wood, and this is close, but it's sweeter and more nutty than what I've been searching for. Definitely worth trying if any of this sounds compelling to you, though.

Its like having a pancakes with maple syrup in an old sawmill. Very woody with cedar and mahogany accompanied with a powdery floral behind it. Its all grounded by the amber and black walnut. I find the fragrance more on the femme side but the black walnut and mahogany reel it in a bit. As it dried down the labdanum really started to shine.

This is definitely very interesting. Heavy wood fragrance underlying an oily smell, much like of old machinery. I prefer cleaner scents so this isn’t for me, but I don’t dislike it. Reminds me a lot of the book binding scent in Tome by Pineward.

An abandoned sawmill smell. Very photorealistic, tells a story instead of being just a perfume. More of an artwork than something to wear. Woody funkiness.

I desperately wanted to like this. I've read about the "Yankee Candle-ness" of some Pineward fragrances in other reviews, and this may be the worst offender of those I've sampled so far. The sawdust and cedarwood are completely overpowered by this syrup-y cloying sweetness in the opening. I typically wouldn't mind this, but it was so strong that I ended up getting a headache and washing it off. As an art piece, the photorealism is great. But not wearable, at least for me - and woody fragrances are my favorite. If you are looking for woody scents that aren't heavy or sticky, this isn't for you.

First spray is HEAVY labdanum. Kind of a let down. This smells less of a HomeDepot 4x8 wood pile or a wood working shop and more of a furniture repair shop where they do varnishing and staining rather than making the furniture themselves. Albeit, a fancy antique furniture repair shop but still. All I’m getting it’s lots of powdery labdanum, shiny old mahogany, black walnut and amber. Unisex.

I don't know what was going on with this on my skin, but I really didn't like it. I assumed this would be similar to Olympic Orchids Woodcut, but I was very wrong. Something was very sour and oily up top, and I didn't want to wait it out. Maybe I'll try again another time.

Smells more like an auto part store than a wood shop in my opinion, but not horrible. Has a simillar vibe to melting pavement in the summer. I was expecting something closer to freshly cut wood, but I'm sure there's an audience for this. 4/10

Phew. Heavy, heavy wood. It is sweetish but nothing can balance out that super heady, incensy, deep dark woods. I’m not good with types of wood, but the imagery is mahogany.

My friend said this smells like a man’s workshop, to me it smells like bad aftershave. Not a fan.

Gristmill along with eldritc, funerie, Nocturnis, murkwood, fanghorn, steading, and brokilan; make up a repertoire of Pineward fragrances that I think allow Nick to demonstrate his artistry. Creating dark, daring, at times challenging scent scapes. Gristmill is loaded with cedar, styrax, labdanum, and smoke.

Ick! Smells like a bad holiday candle! Way too syrupy and it has a strange funk to it. Not a fan of this one. I was hoping for more woody sawdust, but it's not really giving that as much as candle.

Very woody, but if you have an association of strong cedar smelling like pencils, then you may not be able to get past the fact it just smells like pencil shavings.