beetiger

I walked into the gallery yesterday, after having emailed earlier in the week to check in on the new scents, and cb immdiately recognized me, got up, and said hello. Then he gave me a personal tour of the new scents. It's so much fun talking to him about them. He's obviously really proud of his work (who could blame him), and has a ton to say about each scent and the process of developing it.

I'll share in the order he shared with me. He offered each scent to me on a filter strip, to sniff and put on my skin if I liked.

Greenbriar 1968 (CB Secret History):
I copied down the printed text posted with each of these: "This scent is a memory of my Grandfather, the Saw Mill that he owned and the stone house where he lived. It is blended with Sawdust, Fresh Cut Hay, Worn Leather Work Gloves, Pipe Tobacco, and a healthy amount of Dirt. There is also a faint whiff of cotton overalls covered in Axel Grease..."

This scent is complex and earthy-sweet. It's pretty gender-neutral, not intensely masculine, and doesn't have any of the cologne notes I'd normally associate with a "grandfather scent". When I noted the sweetness, CB said it comes from the fact that the tobacco his grandfather smoked was a cherry tobacco, and the sweetness of sawdust. (I think the hay note is also sweet, though.) The vibe of this scent is very comforting, and kind of rural. The dominance of the notes, for me, are dirt, then hay/sawdust, then tobacco, then leather. Very interesting scent.

Under the Arbor:
"Grape leaf is a scent that reminds me of some of the most beautiful places I have visited in Calfornia, Italy, and France. But mostly it reminds me of the old grape arbor that grew in the yard of the house where I lived as a child. I so loved to sit under it on a summer day quietly reading a favorite book curling my toes in the cool moss. This is the scent of Crushed Grape Leaves, Weathered Wood, Green Moss, and Cool Earth."

On the testing strip, this smelled primarily like sweet fruity grapes, with some green leafy notes underneath it. I could tell this was a scent that would change on skin though, as it hovered right on the balancing line of something bright and sweet-green and something that was going to smell like a grape lollipop. cb laughed when I looked a little dubious about the lollipop potential and said that he was pretty sure that on most people it went greener on the skin and encouraged me to put it on. Sure enough, after warming for about 5 minutes, it was sweet and warm, still fruity but much more leaf/viney as well, and not at all like candy. Once it settles, this is a vineyard of Concord grapes, just a few days before the harvest. It actually reminded me in some ways of his Honeysuckle Vine accord, for those of you who like that one. (Yes, of course I went back and checked that when I was wandering through the gallery.) So I started out unsure about this one, but it convinced me. I'm wearing it today.

I Am A Dandelion:
No additional text was posted for this one. I guess the name says it all :). This is very good. It's the smell of the head of the dandelion, not the greens at all as is more typical for dandelion scents in my experience. When I smelled it, eyes closed, I opened my eyes and looked astonished and said "How did you do that?" cb grinned and said "I'm not telling! But I'll tell you this: it took a surprising amount of fancy and expensive flower absolutes to build the scent of the humble dandelion." I used to make dandelion wine from stuff growing in my yard, and this smells like the bucket of flowers right after they are picked. I asked him if he'd actually ever tried to distill dandelions, and he said he hadn't but thought he might try next spring.

CB Archetypes No.1 (ocean) Eternal Return:
"Eternal Return is the scent of sailing toward the shore. It is a blend of Fresh Ocean Air, Wooden Ship, and a faint hint of Cypress trees growing on the cliff above the water."

Oh, this is beautiful. It's a pure ocean scent, more than a beach scent, very crisp and clean and airy, also but in the mode of cb's other aquatics. Like with Cradle of Light, I had something of a visceral reaction when I smelled this, like the Lady of the Sea was calling to me. I asked what ocean this represented, and he said that it was an archetype, not meant to be a specific place, but that he'd been inspired in part by the book the Bull and the Sea, and that he'd been thinking about Theseus' journey when he created it.

CB Archetypes No. 4 (forest) Wild Hunt:
"This is the fourth scent in my series of primal smells. Wild Hunt is the scent of an anceint forest in the heat of a summer afternoon. It is a belnd of Torn Leaves, Crushed Twigs, Flowing Sap, Fallen Branches, Old Leaves, Green Moss, Fir, Pine, and Tiny Mushrooms."

I've been wearing cb's Forest Floor accord as one of my all-time favorites, so I was definitely most excited to try this one, and I'm not disappointed. It's definitely in the same style as Forest Floor in some ways, and cb said that Forest Floor is indeed a core component to it, though it turned out not to be as major a component as he originally expected. It's a much drier scent, more woody, and more complex, though it's still got a lot of dirt/leaf/mushroom character to it too. cb mentioned it's got several types of sandalwood in it. This is very evocative of stopping in a shady spot in an early-summer, deep woods walk to breathe and appreciate the surroundings, and I found wearing it to be invigorating and calming at the same time. It's well belnded, but one component or another seems to pop out at me each time I catch a whiff of it on my skin. Like Forest Floor, it sticks around on my skin much longer than most of his blends. Despite the name, I don't detect any animal-type components in it at all. I'll be buying more of this one for sure.