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A day in the Alps is always nice and makes it quite easy to put things into perspective:

We are small compared to these stone giants. We are not made to live up there by nature. We are supreme creations of nature, having mastered electricity and hence manage to eat chicken nuggets on top of these giants, without having to climb….

I spent a decadent day, was transported all the way up to 3100 meters above sea level by various trains and lifts, and enjoyed a spectacular sunny day doing nothing but chat.

In the evening, Franco from Luckyscent and myself fixed the dates for my visit to his shop in Los Angeles (the official announcement  will follow later by Luckyscent):

April 26, 5pm and 7pm
April 27, 5pm and 7pm

And with this picture I send you my best wishes for the upcoming weekend.

  (View from a peak, close to Goppenstein)

On my way into Swiss heartland right now, the Alps are calling! Before leaving home the shaking hands grabbed for my 10% dilution spicy trial version (running title “eau d’épices”) to do more real world testing. Shaking because:
A) The coffee did not do its job, yet
B) I packed 100 envelopes with samples and a little paper explaining the fragrance after a quick visit in the gym before.
C) I answered quite a few mails
I hope there will be some time over the weekend to look at the spicy fragrance again. There is one aspect I want to investigate, being the rockrose essential oil (Cistus ladaniferus). I am using a particular quality from Essencia, that I can 100% recommend to all perfume making friends.

It is the water steam distilled essential oil, standardized in a sense with cistus extract, meaning part of the stuff that is not distilled, not volatile enough to be carried over by the flow of water steam in the distilling process.

I wonder whether I need to reduce it a little bit in the eau d’épice’s final formula. It is just a detail, but I want to look into it, and there is a second issue: The amount and type of citrus peel essential oils. Right now it is red mandarin and clementine and I wonder whether it might not need a good, heavy injection of bergamot, especially when eventually reducing the fragrance dilution: Issue number 3….what dilution to choose? With all the spices in there (clove, cardamon, corriander, bay, etc.) a little bit less concentration might work even better (again: This is one of these things… sometimes you need to dilute your fragrance more in order to allow certain components really come through).
Right now, the sun comes through the clouds. Hence I will look into the light a little bit…byebye.

Back from Berlin. There was not too much time to do sightseeing but at least while doing my Sunday jogging up and down Tiergarten (there where it says Lützowplace was my hotel…..cool place, I must admit) plus some miles beyond I came accross a few highlights such as Gedächtniskirche (the broken,by WWII bombs, church), Siegessäule (yes, victory column, obviously commemorating another war than WWII) and the Brandenburger Tor where a huge celebration was going on. Celebrating 50 years European Union. Hard to think that the same town was split into two parts  by a wall not too long ago. Ridiculous in a sense.

Ironically, I wanted to make a jogging break and get a drink at Brandenburger Tor. The place was so crowded that I ended up in Burgerking nearby, getting my yummie coke. Maybe we Europeans (except for Switzerland of course, Switzerland is an island within the EU…. Switzerland is maybe even part of another universe, just pretending to be there among the rest of the world) are good in celebrating, daily if possible, with lots of cigarettes and wine, but the Americans made sure that we can get a coke everywhere on planet earth.

While jogging there, I remembered pictures of Tiergarten after the war and wondered how fast man seems to rebuild things. I think we rebuild our houses faster than our hearts.

Talking hearts: When going to bed yesterday I was smiling like a two-year old in anticipation of his birthday. Waiting until 12 pm something, counting slowly to 100, I imagined scented envelopes flying to Russia, Slovakia, Cech Republic, Germany, France, Greece, Switzerland, the US, Japan and other places. Scented envelopes sent from a free country, somewhere in a parallel universe.

Coming back from Berlin, after two days talking about security at an European Security conference, I feel we all should from time to time say our little prayer or thanks to a generation before us, thanking for our living in liberty, without walls, and with coke around the corner.

Dear visitor

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The below mentioned 100 samples are gone. Thank you for your interest, but…it is over for now.

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So….I haven’t posted so regularly these days.

But then: Here comes a little highlight. It is time to celebrate and share. I was very lucky the last few weeks, receiving quite a few mails; perfume lovers asking me for the Rêverie au jardin, or just saying hello and wishing me all the best. Well, thank you all!

And thank you all for visiting from time to time this blog and sending me your thoughts and sharing. I really enjoy all your feedbacks here.

This post is -again- rather short:

I have prepared some 100 samples of the Rêverie au jardin. They will be ready to be shipped by the end of this week. For free. First come first served. To celebrate and to share my private joy in a scent that I like very much (forgive me: I am biased).
How to get one sample for free? (no shipment no price tag, no nothing, I will not even keep your addresses for any marketing purposes)

-> Simple: Just fill out the form below, telling me your name, your e-mail address and most important: Your shipping address. (please… no mails, just use this form, it allows me to easily print out address stickers)

You need to do a little math and push the submit button once. You will then be redirected to a page where it says thank you! If you do not get to the thank you page, just do the math again and push the submit button again.

I will ship priority mail (well, it will still take some 5-10 days depending on where you live). If the 100 samples are gone then the game is over. I will tell you….

Thank you for visiting.

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The sample request form has been removed. I am sorry. I wished I could send more, but ….as we say in German: “alles hat ein Ende, nur die wurst hat zwei”, which translates into “everything has an end, only the sausage has two”……
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With this picture of melting snow and a tough hyacinth, promising spring and fragrant delights, I send you fragrant wishes for the weekend.

Next post: Wednesday after Berlin.

(Picture: Hyacinth in Zurich, March 24 2007)

Greetings from Zurich in Winter Wonderland.
Somewhere down this white cover is a hyacinth….

I am back in Zurich, for two days, before getting off for yet another business trip to Berlin for three days on Sunday. Until I get there I will have to get rid of the snow in front of the house (what you see up there is what I see when looking out the back side of my apartment), getting parcels ready for shipment and make more…. samples!

Right now, you may have guessed it, work on new stuff does not really take place, yet. Let’s call this phase “consolidation” or “getting ready”. What is getting ready are the flacons, too.
At least, a lilttle green spot in all this white fluffy things around me. Fragrant wishes for your weekend.

Greetings from Brussel. Will be back on Friday and send you’ll fragrant wishes

5 min before rushing out of the house to make a loop via Berne to finally get to Brusssels later today, I came across an article in one of W.’s journals, somewhat alternative, food for thought stuff. Without being able to cite properly: The world’s strawberry harvest is estimated to be about sufficient to flavour 1/3 of the US strawberry flavoured products only. Hmm. What happens with my strawberry yoghurt that is part of the other 2/3? , you might ask. Well, better don’t! Modern strawberry feature for instance some Australian wood chips, aldehydes, colour and other stuff to give you this yummy taste and texture of strawberry.
The article continued with an even more disturbing aspect: Children prefer the synthetically reconstituted fruit and vanilla to the true stuff. Bottom line: They have no clue. And who ever has tried to make an all natural yoghurt might be amazed how much fruits you need to get this fruity yummy taste….we are getting spoiled.
“In perfumery, that’s the same”, I thought. And this is the reason for this post today. Hand aufs Herz (translates into “swear…”): Who has smelled real cistrose lately? Who knows what true, real, best quality heartwood sandalwood smells like?

Is this bad? I do not think so; it is just something to be considered. For instance when talking about notes and naturals. I remember when ordering the Wanderlust perfume two years ago, after a Luca Turin post on his blog, I got a diluted sample of a rose otto oil. Educative and generous. Thus, maybe we should from time to time give our nose the real stuff. Like we should treat ourselves once a year with a real strawberry yoghurt, with lots of sun ripped berries, fresh from around the corner.

What was sand pretty much two weeks ago with the corresponding fun factor, is snow today. Zurich is under a white cover, for the second time this year. I take it as bye-bye of the warmest winter we had since coca cola was invented.
Thus, focusing my coffee mug for about 5 min, a sleeping brain on my neck, with not much more than the key functions on such as heart beating and lungs breathing, realizing how white things are this morning, I went for some spices and orange flower and airy woods: L’eau d’épices.

In its latest version. Diluted to 10%, after a good month’s maturation.
Vero approved.

Loving it!

It got definitely better, slightly softer, without loosing its wild character (spices!) and masculine touch. Spices being clove, cinnamon, cardamon, coriander. The orange flower (although the absolute it is not indolic at all, more on the neroli side) is fixed quite nicely and balanced new by an orris line that brings out the woody aspects from frankincense, vetiver. The latest mod was diluted a few days ago and need to see how it matures in dilution, but so far: Nice.

(picture: boxed rêverie au jardin, the result of two days fiddling around with card board boxes, flyers, bottles, stickers and ribbons; a few boxes out of many filling up my perfume stock room these days)

Sorry folks for being somewhat silent lately; together with many things that needed to get done, like attending a little conference last Friday, I needed to get back to tracks, had to find them in a sense. Well, I guess I found them hidden below some sandy memories and there we are:
After a few “is this you?” here’s the official statement: The guy cleaning up the soaking wet tent somewhere in Etosha (earlier post), that’s W. , the famous W.-factor carrier. The guy on the Rêverie au jardin sample and packaging flyer is the perfumer himself.
Another, somewhat wild and sandy aspect of a perfumer you find revealed in the video
Sandy acitities (15 MB, avi file, opens with windows media player); trust me, the dunes are higher than they seem and the speed is faster than it looks. I managed to get 72 km per hour down on a particular dune. No lasting injuries, but I think my body is still getting rid of some sand….
Rêverie au jardin kept me quite busy this weekend, as I needed to get the first pile of boxes ready for shipment. When not in Brussels this week, I will make samples; whereby I have said it already…. Tuesday evening sees me in Brussels until Wednesday, followed by business trip to Berlin next Sunday until mid-week….

Thus, quite busy days ahead, but with all my memories of peaceful hours around smoking camp fires, these busy days will pass easily.

And finally, when I say “smoking camp fire”, I mean it. I never got so much camp fire in such a little time and I was always quite good in picking the place around the fire where the smoke would travel to. Some of you know it: I quite like birch tar, smoky, leathery earthy notes, with an animalic undertone. I remember a post on basenotes by Scentsibility, Paul,  that made me smile, I never thought about “tauer” being german for tar, or being pronounced as [ta:r], in German it is pronounced like “tower”, but Mr. Tar is cool. And I love birch tar. “Hello, I am Andy. I like birch tar and put it in, almost everywhere ” ;-)
Now, Namibian camp fires converted me; I am in search of soft flowers these days. Lucky me, I had my Rêverie au jardin with me, allowing me to draw soft green lines, gleaming through clouds of smoke, under a yellow moon.