Incense and Pomegranate -- Pomegranate Week: Day Five

Well, the fires are still burning, but I have the air filter running at max and I think my sense of smell is working a little better than it was yesterday.

So...let's take a look at Dark Fruit. It was a general catalog blend from the now unfortunately closed Violette Market.

The description read: "Smoldering pomegranate and berries, kissed with earthy patchouli and incense."

Now here's the thing: I love patchouli as long as it's used carefully. There's a world of difference between the patchouli used by good perfumers and the cheap stuff you often smelled on people at Grateful Dead concerts. So I tend to approach anything that has patchouli in it with a certain caution.

At first sniff, Dark Fruit is both earthy and smokey. The fruit is both tart and sweet, and you can certainly tell there's patchouli in it. But it's not dirty hippie patchouli at all; rather, it adds a nice deep earthy note over which rises the scent of the fruit and some kind of woody incense. At a guess, I'd say the wood is sandalwood. In fact, I imagine that this is how a piece of sandalwood that had been soaked for a long time in pomegranate and berry (blackberry? tart raspberries?) juice and a little bit of patchouli oil would smell if you then burned it. Unlike a lot of incense smells, I don't get a heavy blast of resin, although there's a very faint scent underneath all the others that might be myrrh.

As the name suggests, this is a very dark take on pomegranate. This is Persephone in front of a fire in the Underworld during the dead of winter, while above her, Demeter mourns her absence. I love it, but I don't think I'll be wearing it until late October at the earliest; it's a warm, somewhat heavy and not particularly sweet scent that's perfect for cold days.

I was very sorry to see Violette Market close. This blend alone was enough to convince me that she had a very interesting take on the whole Dark Victorian branch of indie perfumes. While this could be considered headshoppy, it's unique enough that it doesn't smell like a BPAL knock off. I'm glad I had the money to take advantage of her going-out-of-business sale and get a 1/2 oz of this.