More Incredibly Brief BPAL Yule Reviews

Still testing my way through these

Chanukkiyah. Olive oil, beeswax, glowing amber, sweet sufganiyot, pomegranate, and fig. Fruity, with an almost-herbal note that is probably the olive oil or the beeswax. Reminds me a little of Jack. Not something I find terribly pleasant to wear, though.

Gelt. A bounty of chocolate coins! Dry cocoa and golden amber! Yup. Smells like chocolate. I’ve got enough chocolate scents, and frankly I don’t like smelling like chocolate frosting all day.

Yuletide. Ripe, bursting, blood red holly berries pricked by sharp, waxy holly leaves. Berries and a sort of piney incense. Mostly it dries down to the incense note to me; Matt claims the berries last longer for him. He’s a much bigger fan than me, but I like it well enough to wear.

Rose Red. The perfected winter rose, dew covered and freshly cut. Holy shit, is it. I put on just a few drops, and I’m going to spend the rest of the day smelling like a florist’s shop. Maybe it will attract prettyboy assassins? That said, I think I like it. Do I bottle-like it, though?

I also see that the Lupercalia scents are up (link probably NSFW), and it’s a Smut year. Smut, a semi-limited edition, is perhaps one of my signature scents. I still have most of a bottle — but is that enough to last until the next Smut year?

Abbreviated BPAL Yule 2014 reviews

I have a bunch of testers of this year’s Yules. I need to test them before the Yules come down in February. Unfortunately, I am busy as hell and don’t have a lot of time to even put on perfumes, let alone write down my impressions. But if I don’t, I won’t remember anything, and getting testers (which is like a 1/4 of an imp) means I don’t have a lot to work with.

So far I have tried:

Butter Rum Cookie. Rum-soaked brown butter cookies, crusted with sugar, soaked in almond and garnished with orange rind and pummeled pecans. Pretty good. More cookie than rummy. Not sure I need more foody scents.

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes. Bittersweet chocolate cupcakes whisked with stout and topped with inky dark chocolate frosting. This oil has a lot of dark sediment in a lighter base. For about a nanosecond, this smells perfectly like chocolate frosting. Then it starts to just smell generically sweet and a little playdo-y.

Mari Lwyd. Welsh cakes and ale with a smattering of dried lavender. This one is a winner for me. The lavender doesn’t become overpowering or sneezy or awful, and mostly just mellows out the foody notes, which can be too heavy on their own. On drydown, it reminds me a bit of Tweedledee/Tweedledum, in that it’s something sweet anchored by something base.

I think I also tried Hot Buttered Rum? It smelled as advertised, which is probably too foody to add to my currently INCREDIBLY FOODY collection.