There’s a very nice review today of Fireside Intense and Ambre Noir on the blog I Smell Therefore I Am:
http://ismellthereforeiam.blogspot.com/2008/10/sonoma-scent-studio-fireside-intense.html
I prefer Fireside Intense to Fireside because I like the smoke accord better and I like the touch of leather. The first few minutes of Intense are intense though, so you need to be a smoky woods lover to like it. It has lots of natural woods ingredients and the drydown lasts a long time. Nice to see people enjoying it; this is the right time of year! It’s a gray fall day here today.
I should get an estimated ship date on my labels today. I’m making bottles of Vintage Rose and Winter Woods this morning (working on orders from Oct 1st today, so am catching up a little).
4 comments
Ugh, we’re back to having summer here again 🙁
I was happy to read those new reviews in the blog you mentioned. I’ve really come to appreciate that particular blog in the last month or so and have found their posts to be quite enjoyable and well written.
Debating about a new order from you. I’d really like to get some of the Winter Woods but was hoping to be able to get Lieu de Reves at the same time. No idea about when, huh? S’okay though, I have patience!
Hi Gail,
We have rain tonight! First rain of the season (we are dry all summer here). Maybe our rain will move your way and bring some cooler temps…
I’m sorry about the timing on the new scents, but I’ll get back to them.
The posts on that blog have been interesting, yes! I’ll have to try the new FM sometime — sounds intriguing.
I think Fireside Intense perfume smells a bit like lysol. An old fashion dentists office comes to mind… is it the resins and tars? Any myrrh in it? I’ll use up my whole bottle even though I can’t figure out this scent. I like it, but it’s really different. Where’s the smokiness? I don’t find any in my bottle. There is something in there that seems like a chemical, a chemical…from a scientific laboratory.
Hi Elizabeth,
Your reaction is interesting because usually people find it has a very prominent smoke note between the birch tar, guaiacwood, choya, nagarmotha, and cade; that’s a whole lot of natural smoky woods ingredients in there, and the smoke is pretty strong. No myrrh.
Nagarmotha does have a bit of a medicinal edge in the opening few minutes, but it dries down to a smoky, resinous woods. The ingredients are almost all natural but some are quite unusual. Although birch tar has the word tar in it, the rectified product that perfumers use is a liquid that smells like woodsmoke; we dilute it down to a very minute level because it is strong.
Fireside Intense also has some leather notes from the birch tar and castoreum; the leather notes may be part of what you are sensing, though I’m thinking it could be the nagarmotha that’s reading as medicinal to you. It also has a touch of smoky agarwood and that’s a note that people can react to in different ways.
With an unusual scent like this it’s really a good idea to try a sample first. I’m sorry if it wasn’t what you were expecting; we all smell things a little differently.