By Now I Really Know How to Spell Pomegranate -- Pomegranate Week: Day Last

Okay one final BPAL Limited Edition Pomegranate scent. And really, it's about time; I'm reaching the point where the word "pomegranate" doesn't look like a real word any more.

The Fruit of Paradise was part of the Yule '07 line. The Lab said:
"While Persephone visited the realm of Hades, she tasted one single pomegranate seed, an act which compelled her to remain connected to the Land of the Dead for all eternity. Demeter's grief over her beloved daughter's absence that brings on the bleakness and barrenness of the winter months.

The Fruit of Paradise, the Nectar of Death: bittersweet pomegranate."

First off, I always heard that it was six pomegranate seeds Persephone ate, which led to her staying with Hades one month for every seed. But never mind....

Fruit of Paradise opens with a burst of pomegranate that is very very close to Swank, if not as crisp. It's still pretty sweet, however. After a short time there's a slightly spicy note that someone on the forum said they thought was clove. Since a bitter note creeps in around the same time, I'm thinking that maybe they're right and it is clove. I had wondered if maybe it was myrrh.

Regardless, this is a pretty straightforward scent that....

Okay, I'll admit it, it totally smells like Midnight Pomegranate from Bath and Body Works. It's a little more bitter, but not much, and I get the feeling that if I were to dilute it in some perfumer's alcohol, I'd end up with Midnight Pomegranate Eau de Toilette or even the body splash.

Needless to say, it layers excellently with the B&BW products, which give it damn good staying power and a decent throw/sillage. I don't actually regret buying it--I picked it up on eBay for about what I would have paid for it if I'd bought it from the Lab--but of all the actual pomegranate oils I've got, this one is the one I could most easily do without. The "clear, fruity sweet" niche on my perfume shelf is perfectly filled by Swank, which I like more than I like Fruit of Paradise.

And so, although I actually didn't plan it this way, we've come full circle, from sweet uncomplicated pomegranate to sweet uncomplicated pomegranate. The one review I didn't repost but feel I should link to is Loreto Aromatica's custom blend Ruth, which features pomegranate as one of its top notes.

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Next up, I'm getting as far from sweet fruit as I can. Tomorrow, I'll be reviewing Tauer Perfumes Vetiver Dance.

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.

Tea, Black Pomegranate, Hot -- Pomegranate Week: Day Four

I'm terribly sorry about this, but I'm re-posting a review I did a while back, with a couple of changes. We're in fire country here in NoCal and while there's no chance of us having to flee or anything like that, the smoke is godawful--seriously, while still quite high in the sky, the moon was dark orange tonight--and it's playing havoc with my sinuses, so no testing and reviewing anything today.

Anyway....

Today, I'm revisiting Blooddrop's The (un)Poisoned Tea Cup, which was a Spring '08 Limited Edition.

The description read: "Fortunately for the drinker, this cup of pomegranate black tea was left unscathed."

This one is exactly as advertised, down to the faint tannin/bitter note of the black tea. The pomegranate is just the way it would be in a tea blend; it's not like sweetened juice or pomegranate syrup has been added to the tea, but is a more subtle dry pomegranate. It does sweeten up a tad but never gets really sweet the way BPAL's Swank does. It's another simple scent, what you get all the way through is a crisp, brisk cup of pomegrante tea or glass of iced pomegrante tea, bracing and refreshing.

When I first tried it, the tea note faded fairly quickly. Later, however, when I'd applied it more liberally, it hung around for quite some time, although the throw/sillage was rather minimal. I purchased the bath gel and light soy lotion as well and all together, they really increase the staying power of the scent.

I'd say this is a spring/summer scent for days when you don't want to smell too sweet.

Even if tomorrow is smokey, I won't be going out like I did today, so hopefully, I'll be able to review something new.

Shaken, Not Stirred, and Sugar on the Rim, Please -- Pomegranate Week: Day Three

Today, partly because we had a late dinner at Ink--a local bar and restaurant that serves food well into the wee hours-- and partly because I did The Flower Song yesterday, I'm going to review one of my early BPAL favorites.

Swank is from the Lab's general catalog; you can find it in the Bewitching Brews section.

The Lab says: "Simply cool, the essence of Lounge: the scent of a crisp pomegranate martini."

It is, again, a fairly sweet scent, although it has none of Flower Song's syrup to it. Instead, it is, as they say, crisp. In fact, and this is always one of those mysteries, it smells cold. I have no idea how that is accomplished, but that's why I don't blend perfume. Well one of the reasons anyway.

Cutting the sweetness down to tolerable levels is the martini part of the equation. This isn't a vodka martini, as one would expect. No, there's a hint of juniper berry in there, just the tiny touch needed to tell us that this martini is gin.

It's a very very simple scent, no morphing, no changing to anything else. It's got a clean sweetness to it that makes it the perfect summer weather fruit scent. Which, as it reached 108F/42C here and the air quality was bad thanks to the fires burning all over the Sacramento Valley, I really needed. It's got excellent staying power and a pretty standard throw/sillage for an oil.

The very first time I reviewed this, over on the BPAL forum, I mentioned the scent memory I referred to the other day. To my mind, this blend, more than any of the others, is that fruit essential oil I loved as a kid, only grown up. Sure it's still sweet, but there's a lightness and a subtle hint of something else that makes it fun and adult.

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About the giveaway. I'm doing a pomegrante scented gift package for the Live Long n Marry auction. I plan on doing the "lite" version--fewer goodies and smaller amounts--as a blog giveaway, probably sometime over the weekend, provided I've reached the deadline for this story I'm slaving over. :)

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Finally, I got my little sample of Andy Tauer's Vetiver Dance because I was lucky enough to sign up for the samples he was giving away in celebration of his third year blogging. I haven't tried it yet, but all indications are that I'm in for a real treat. Of course, I had to go and look at his other perfumes and am dying to try L'air du désert marocain, Incense extrême and maybe score some Incense rosé for Darkrose. Seeing as they run $100 for a bottle, though, maybe not so much. All I can say is "thank God for The Perfumed Court."

Row Faster Guys, and Feed Me Some Pomegranate Seeds -- Pomegrante Week: Day Two

It's still Tuesday as far as I'm concerned--I keep very late hours--and so here's the second day of Pomegranate week.

Today I'm writing up The Flower Song, a BPAL Limited Edition from the Lupercalia '08 Love Poems Collection.

The Lab said: "Unknown, Written during Egypt's New Kingdom
To hear your voice is pomegranate wine to me:
I draw life from hearing it.
Could I see you with every glance,
It would be better for me
Than to eat or to drink.

Pomegranate wine, lotus root, river reeds, hyssop, and barley."

My initial impression was a blast of thick sweet pomegranate. Two years ago at Thanksgiving, I made something called pomegrante molasses, which involved boiling down several cups of pomegrante juice into a thick syrup, which I used to baste a pair of Cornish Game Hens--Darkrose and I don't like turkey. If I'd added about a cup and a half of sugar to the juice before boiling it, the end product would have smelled a lot like this. At first it's a little much, even for me.

Fortunately, it calms down some and there's a little bit of a green note, which I assume is the lotus root. There's also a faint winey note, but not enough to make you think you've spilled your drink. A little while later, some toasted cereal creeps in underneath the thickness and helps smooth things out.

After than, it doesn't morph much. It's a slightly thick, smooth pomegranate wine. One of my early and persistent BPAL favorites is Swank, the Lab's pomegranate martini blend. While that one is sweet but sharp with the gin note, this is sweet and a little syrupy and should be worn on your barge on the Nile while pretty, mostly naked girls (or guys according to your inclination) fan you. If you live somewhere other than ancient Egypt, I'd say wear this in the fall or winter when you need something comforting and a little thick.

It's got staying power for days and a pretty good throw/sillage.

While it's a Limited Edition, it's recent enough that it's still available on either the BPAL forums or eBay.

Still life with Pomegranates -- Pomegranate Week Day One

Pomegranate, it seems, is the new vanilla. Instead of a few lonely bottles languishing in the produce section, Pom now markets several blends of pomegranate juices and iced teas; you can get pomegranate tea blends, pomegranate candy and I'm surprised Starbucks hasn't figured a way to try to make pomegranate and coffee work together, although I suspect they offer a pomegranate Italian soda. The other day Darkrose found out that Dryers sells a mixed box of no-calorie made-with-real-juice popsicles in pomegranate blends--they're pretty good too.

And of course perfume and body products are right there in the vanguard, just about everyone offers something with pomegranate. In fact, reading the reviews of the major perfume and niche houses over at Now Smell This I see that some people feel that pomegranate has been used too much recently.

Me? I love it. And so I declare this week to be "All Pomegranate Week" here at IMNKMAL.

First off, I'll start with a basic.

Midnight Pomegranate from Bath & Body Works is cheating a little, because it's about as far from indie and small business as you can get. On the other hand, not only is it really really hard to beat BBW sale prices, but this is a very commonly and inexpensively duped fragrance, making it easy for smaller etailers to offer a full range of bath and body products in the scent.

It is the quintessential sweet fruity scent and it's probably aimed at a much younger woman than I am. Looking at the listing for the Body Splash is kind of funny because they say: Top Notes: Pomegranate, Sparkling Citrus, Dewberry, Anise, Cinnamon, Nutmeg; Mid Notes: Cassis, Black Berry, Iris, Jasmine, Raspberry; Base Notes: Musk, Sandalwood, Vanilla, Tobacco, Patchouli. Honestly? All I get is a the pomegrante and maybe a little cassis, sweet vanilla and a very sweet musk. To be fair, I haven't tried the Eau d' Toilette; maybe it's more complex than the Body Splash. I also have the Shower Gel and the Body Cream--their mid-weight lotion--and it's all very much the same. If you use the gel, the scent clings just a little around after your shower, which helps amp the pomegranate if when you wear another pomegranate fragrance such as BPAL's Swank or Love Song. If you can handle the sweetness, the shower gel, body cream and body splash combo is perfect for a warm day spent running around. Layered that way, or even on its own, the Body Splash has pretty remarkable staying power and if you spritz generously, it's got a decent throw/sillage for what it is.

You can get just about every scented product BBW carries, including their anti-bacterial line and their home fragrances, in Midnight Pomegranate. I wouldn't pay full price for it, but that's because it's easy enough to wait and then go wild during one of their sales.

I think I like it and other sweet pomegranate scents aimed at the 17-25 yo market because of a scent memory. The very first perfume I ever wore was Spiritual Sky's Raspberry Essential Oil, which is a painfully sweet raspberry with no subtlety at all. Occasionally, I don't mind revisiting that time when a nice shot of uncomplicated, unsophisticated, sugared fruit made me feel pretty.

I mentioned a give away the other day; more about that tomorrow.