Tango Fleuri

Extrait de Parfum

Extrait de Parfum

The month of December will witness the release of our last two Elixir Attars planned for this year.

Originally we had one planned for November and the other for December, however the project of releasing my friends’ and perfumery students’ perfume changed the plan a bit, we decided November for both his compositions, and December for the remaining two Elixir Attars.

Today i am presenting the works of one of my best perfumery students, i had several students of perfumery over the last few years, Sardanapal Abelar (pseudonym at his request) is one of the most notable due to his deep dedication to the craft.

Generally when he undertakes something he immerses himself almost completely in it, and perfumery was not his first very successful indulgence, to conclude, he is a very multitalented and successful person and i wish him the best in life moving forward.

I wont talk about both compositions myself, if i did not think they were excellent, i would never have offered them, i can only say, i wear both of them, Tango Fleuri is a heavenly Gardenia/tuberose composition with insane amounts of gardenia enfleurage, and Prince Sardanapal is one of the best frankincense perfumes i have ever smelt.

In his own words about Tango Fleuri.

I have been working on Tango for quite a few years now. The story goes like this: on a bright day in May, somewhere in Italy where hills meet the sea, we were listening to Ojos Negros by Raul Garello, one of those Argentinians that was brought down to this earth, either from the Heavens or from Hell (it wouldn’t matter anyway) just to bestow upon us the gift of music. So, we were listening, and we were imagining perfumes. Slowly it was coming all together in my daydream, like a flow of images from black and white movies: TUBEROSE the courtesan, the geisha, the ultimate and fatal lover, VANILLA the upper class uber refined matron of the house and PATCHOULI the sweat, the earth, the old curtains and the high ceilings of the establishment. All the ingredients and images that entangle into the very soul of TANGO.

So, there you go, the heart of it: TUBEROSE, VANILLA, PATCHOULI. TANGO.

The dream was over and I quicky mixed the three together and “Oh là là” Sufi said. That was how the Tango kernel was born.

Back home I started the work. First, I needed to find the right materials to build up the most lavish, extravagant and daring perfume I have ever attempted. And as you all might know that there is tuberose and there is TUBEROSE, as there is vanilla and there is VANILLA. And the same for all the other components I wanted to use. I decided to go all in and spare no expense.

I managed to secure a batch of vintage Indonesian Patchouli which at that time has been aging for over 15 years. Tuberose came in the form of Absolute but also in the form of Enfleurage, one of those almost forgotten techniques of extracting the scent of the flowers from fresh flowers. Remember the scene from Suskind’s “Perfume” when Grenouille fell mortally ill because he couldn’t distil the scents he wanted, asks Baldini: “Tell me metre, are there other ways to extract the scent from things besides pressing or distilling? Baldini couldn’t deny a dying man his last wish and answered: “There are three other ways my son, enfleurage a chaud, enfleurage a froid and enfleurage a l’huille. They are superior to distillation in several ways, and they are used for extraction of the finest of all scents …” Then Grenouille miraculously gets better and makes

his way to Grasse.

In the meantime, it is almost impossible to get hold of effleurages these days as they are notoriously expensive and very few artisans do them these days. We found some Tuberose and Gardenia in the depths of the South American continent. And we used plenty of it. No effort was spared for the debut perfume.

Vanilla didn’t come in easier comparatively with the other materials. If you’ve been following the drama with the Madagascan vanilla, you would know that the government in Antananarivo was in a power struggle with the vanilla industry after setting a minimum export price per kilo.

The prices immediately shot up like crazy and exports halted.

Anyway, this is how we got the Tango, now we

had to add the FLEURI:

A special bouquet of some of the most special flowers: the unique and very special Linden Blossom, not sure if there will be another one like this, then the finest of Moroccan Neroli, the truest to reality scent of the rose: the Turkish

Rose Absolute (not otto!) and to top them all up

– the White Frangipani.

And all of this on a bed of Chinese Sinensis Oud and a very special Mongolian Chocolatey Musk

infusion.

The structure of the perfume itself is complex but linear in development so that all the notes sing at the same time, all the time, from spray to dry down.

Macerated for almost a year.

40 bottles batch.

Never to be repeated in this form