Botrytis
by Ginestet

Botrytis: honeyed spices, fruit, and pipe tobacco over noble rot accented with a little bit of white florals over a virtually wood-less base. Very sweet and overbearing, but very delicious. Try sampling this against By Kilian's Back to Black!

Botrytis has a fascinating opening: honey sweet, smoky, foody, and musty, all at the same time. I find it heavy – overbearing even – but I keep wanting to sniff it all the same. The smoke here is more like tobacco smoke than incense or barbecue, and the musty element may result from its juxtaposition with some very smooth woods in the foundation. The whole thing strikes me as extremely rich and dark, but the foody element does not fall off the fence into chocolate or mocha. (And thank goodness for that!)

The tobacco smoke intensifies an detaches a bit from the central accord, and as it does so it takes on an ashy sharpness. The result here smells to me a bit like spiced honey served in an ashtray. Again, weird, but also compelling in its own way. As this accord develops it becomes oddly familiar, something I’ve smelled before but can’t exactly place. Then it hits me: Botrytis is channeling Fumerie Turque!

That’s right, with the honey, spices, and tobacco smoke, Botrytis is a close cousin to the much-praised Lutens fragrance. The two are by no means identical though, in spite of their shared central notes. Botrytis is the sweeter and decidedly more gourmand-smelling of the two, and its smoke is much less forward. It’s also less complex than Fumerie Turque. The musty impression that Botrytis leaves also contrasts with the musky animalic accord that anchors Fumerie Turque. There are more obvious oriental rose and jasmine in Fumerie Turque as well. It would the unfair to call Botrytis “Fumerie Turque Lite,” but on the other hand, if you like the one, you’re liable to enjoy the other, too. What’s better, you can actually buy Botrytis in North America.

The raisiny, alcoholic aspects that you might expect of the “noble rot” that gives us sauternes and winter’s rich auslese wines only appear after two or three hours of wear. At the same time, the smoke component dissipates, so that the rest of Botrytis’s development is highly individual. The dessert wine accord grows more and more prominent, as do the woody basenotes, completing the olfactory metaphor of the sweet wine maturing in its barrels.

If I could go swimming in this, I would. It's honey-sweet and delicious, perfect for the colder months. It's very long lasting on me -- about the entire day... in snowing winter!

Spiced honey. Very sweet, very gourmand, very gone in 15 minutes.