Divine Bergamote (2003)
by Different Company

Divine Bergamote opens with a very tart, almost acidic note of Lime+Lime peel. it's pretty stark, intense, gritty and enjoyable. with each wear it gets better. this scent progresses from being gritty to soft notes of lemon to a fruity touch fo rhubarb (think b*men) to a very soft/powdery cloud of musk towards base with traces of lime still present. it took me couple of wears to "get it" and now it's irreplaceable, like all other TDC's!

It took me some time and several wears to get this one, but now that it finally happened, I'm quite smitten. The first word that comes to mind is cheerful. Bright citrusy notes are teamed with ginger and rhubarb which give the scent a lovely tart burn, the kind you get when you eat pickled ginger with sushi. Bergamote is an easy-to-wear feelgood scent suitable for work and play and brightening up any day!

Very pleasant opening of fresh fruit with sweet note, which quickly fades into something different, also pleasant yet generic and unremarkable. Disappears almost completely within minutes.

Amazing bergamot! Though very typical otherwise. With the topnotes lasted longer. Though the basenotes usually are more important, even the basenotes don't last very long.

A jazzy upper orange note starts this one out as a good-time scent but not undignified, you understand. It has a supremely elegant dry-down with a sherry/muscat/rose ? sheen on it that is perhaps what the company itself describes as rhubarb wood and musk, ingredients out of which I plan one day to make the world’s best crumble. Along with Rose Poivrée, this is the most inventive and fascinating of the four JCE TDC scents.

A strong introduction of an excellent bergamot, which immediately begins to degrade. I don’t know what causes the too-rapid offing of the bergamot note, but I suspect it’s the fusing with the ginger – not a good choice for pairing as far as I’m concerned. The degrading of the note doesn’t really lead to an off note; rather it leads to something quite generic and inconsequential. It is a minimalist fragrance, as so many of Ellena’s works are. I am usually very comfortable with minimalism, but with Divine Bergamot I just don’t grasp whatever is happening with the fragrance, except that it starts out beautifully then does a nose dive off the cliff. Perhaps there are wonderful things happening in this fragrance that I’m not aware of. What I get is unexciting, uninteresting, and short-lived. I’m not a fan.