Tallemaja

Tallemaja has one of the most amazing and complex progression I've ever encountered in an all natural perfume. It opens with a dry boozy medicinal accord that has me positively swooning. I don't get any foresty green vibe at this stage unless you're talking a clandestine gathering of bootleggers in the woods making and trading moonshine. A bone-dry oud stands out right from the beginning (think Guerlain Santal Royal or MMM's Across Sands) and is responsible for the overall dark incensy feel. I love me some medicinal bitters! I wish this stage will persist forever but Tallemaja's destiny unfolds irrevocably forward from this point. The second stage witnesses the fragrance's evolution into proper forest territory. I get a delicious earthiness. It's like the dank smell of wet moss, and the slightly sweet taste of the rain on your tongue. It's quiet. The bawdy bootleggers have left. Moisture from the undergrowth is evaporating under a re-emerging sun, carrying with it the musty woody odour (OUDour?) of a freshly bathed forest. In the drydown, Tallemaja once again presents that lovely oud mingled with some residual sweetness from its woody recesses. From the official description, I had expected a grassy, piney, mousse de chêne type scent replete with the usual terpenes, balsams and oakmoss. Wrong! This is that and more. A gutsy paean to woods and earth. And the oud! It's the real deal.

A beautiful mysterious rose in a forest, has the dark vibe and also has some aromatic aroma to bring the slightly freshness. Basically It’s more about ancient forest, earthiness, barks and roots, the oud just deepen the old woody feel, not like Arabic traditional rose oud at all. You will not find jammy sweet rose here, more like dry rose petals, and the whole scent is far more mossy and resinous, with the cool and deeply earthy atmosphere. I enjoy it very much. Beautiful.

Tallemaja is a fairy tale of a perfume, but a dark fairytale. I smell in colour and pictures and this one to me is a castle, deep in the nordic forests, it's the smell of damp stones covered in ivy, earthenware pots overflowing with blood-red roses and trailing leaves, lingering sacred resins, the scent of the forest beyond the walls, always pervasive, concoctions from the apothecary, highly polished benches, forbidden lovers and a timeless promise.

Just disclosing that I made this fragrance. Its scent was inspired by my very first encounter with Aromatics Elixir. At the age of 19, Aromatics Elixir was a disturbing jolt to my young nose, a total break from everything I'd ever previously known as perfume. Many years later, Tallemaja was my own attempt to venture further and deeper inside the darkest forests of my imagination. The dry boozy medicinal accord that fillifelle (below) describes is spot on. This fragrance is absolutley Bilbo Baggins's encounter with the trolls in Eriador en route to Erebor with the dwarves and Gandalf. As Gandalf's cleverness unfolds, the first rays of sunlight turn the trolls to stone, and our company journeys onward to Rivendell.

Tallemaja is a bewitching virtual reality that sounds like Clannad's "Herne," with damp moss and leaves underfoot in the dappled light of a forest canopy. It's a scent of a time and place - long ago and far away in Sherwood - but Tallemaja makes it now and here. Tallemaja captures the dichotomy of the serenity of the forest and of things unnatural lurking there. The trees bid you to rest a little, find safety at their feet. There you press into the ancient forest floor and are intoxicated by the smell of moist, dark humus, of trees, fungi and blades and leaves of green. You awaken and are unsure of whether you were dreaming.