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An update on the incenses….I am still waiting for an answer on delivery times for some ingredients for the incenses. It won’t be before the end of the week until I shall get an answer.

I will have to make the launch of the incenses dependent on this answer. To be honest: I do not think I can seriously launch this baby extrême (first priority) or the baby rosé (comes second) before X-mas. We will see at the end of this week.
But then…there is no reason to hurry. There will come spring and this is the perfect season to hike in the desert, visit LA and drink Californian Chardonnay with Franco from Luckyscent and you….psst: Franco doesn’t know yet ;-)
Time will tell. Until the end of the week I am in some sort of heavy duty workshop, starting today until Friday. Thus, catching the morning train …..talk to you again over the week end.

(picture: Morning sun over Zurich, seen from one of the many trains going forth and back)

I just say: Sniff! Sniffapalooza! Sniffapalooza magazine. Go on-line (well I guess you are…) and get it. Here is the link. Once there, do you your reading until you come to the section about the bottle journey and then have a look at the PICTURE….hehehe! Thank you Raphaella. I am glad you dared!

By the way: Here is Raphaella’s comment on the hyacinth and a mechanic (the bottle on a journey) fragrance on my website. In the mean time the bottle is still going west..SF!
More  pictures, less juicy but with an equal high beauty factor….from my hike over the Loetschen.
morning dew

mystical woods
fragrant resins (fir, ahhhhhhh so good!)
busy bees and perfect excuses to make a 10 second break
even more excuses on the way up (trust me…it is a long way)
finally, up there…

So this was the week end after Maria B.’s reflection of the incenses. More about incenses, my preparations to get my garden ready for a hippie camp and and what’s next in the coming days here…stay tuned….

This was also the week end of going forth and back, in search of notes while sniffing with Vero, in search of a car battery that would make my old car functional again and in search of the peak. We hiked again, until a state of exhaustion, from Kandersteg over the Loetschenpass to the other side, 1400 meters up and about the same down. In between were flowers, sun and the fragrances of nature like larix (larch).
So, today, after Maria B.’s wonderful words, here comes a visual from Marie C., a fresh preprint from Russia, I think it will be out in a few days.

Tauer Perfumes in Marie Claire, about niche perfumery, together with Konstantin’s Parfums d’Imperfiction and  escentric molecules. Konstantin: Congratulations to you too!

More tomorrow…
(picture showing the three page article in the Russian Marie Clarie featuring niche perfumers)

Off for a hike in the mountains, more again here on Monday…
Fragrant wishes for your week end.

Maria B.

“Both of Andy’s frankincense-based works-in-progress are tenacious and beautiful, but they differ markedly in character.  Whereas Incense rosĂ© is playful, Incense extrĂŞme, an eau de parfum trial at 20%, is serious and powerful.  Its strong opening notes are coriander and orange leaves.  I brought in orange leaves from the garden and cut them up onto a plate where I had shaken some ground coriander seeds.  Yes, I discovered, that was the opening exactly.  The orange leaves have a citrusy quality that emerges through leafy greenness.  Coriander, to my surprise, has an orangey aspect along with its sweet spiciness.  “Spicy citrus” is a good way to describe the first phase.  My DH exclaimed, “God, that smells nice!  God, that’s just amazing!”

Eighteen minutes after spraying, I noticed a change: the smoky heart of orris and Texan cedarwood (actually derived from a juniper) became prominent.  Then the frankincense made its profound presence felt.

The combination is smooth at every moment.  There are no sharp edges despite the crispness of the drydown and the fragrance’s overall intensity.  The final stage is bracingly clean.  Amber is listed in the notes, but frankincense, the purifier, is what dominates.  Andy calls the composition “minimalist.”  I would also say transparent—or maybe translucent like smoke.

My spouse and I wondered if the drydown was too clean.  Then I wore a tropical floral on a hot day when I was driving around taking care of bureaucratic matters.  I longed for a shower and the cleanness of Incense extrême.

My DH concluded that Andy has two winners here.  I agree.  If Andy doesn’t come out with these eaux de parfum, we should hop planes to Zurich and stand outside his apartment building with basset hound expressions and pathetic little signs around our necks saying, “Incense please.”

Thank you, Andy!”

(Post sent in by Maria B., published and uploaded without modifications by Andy)

(picture uploaded by raichinger on stock exchange, modified by Andy, www.sxc.hu)

Maria B.
“When Andy asked me if I would be willing (!) to try mods of the two frankincense fragrances he’s been working on and then share my impressions with my fellow blog readers, I was thrilled. Now that I have tried them, I am ecstatic.

The first one I tried on has the working title of Incense rosé. This trial is an eau de parfum at 25%. It is perfect. I rarely use that adjective. Not a molecule should be changed in it.

I spritzed it on, and what greeted me was a delightful, effervescent citrus cocktail of clementine and bergamot. My DH’s reaction upon smelling it was, “Wow! Whoa! I think he hit a home run!”

Around eight minutes later the heart began revealing itself: smoky Texan cedarwood enveloping sweet Turkish rose absolute and orris. Then I distinguished the frankincense. The description Andy included with the mods reads in part: “I want to capture the floral beauty that hides in frankincense.” He has achieved his objective. The DH commented, “It’s amazing! It’s REALLY amazing!” Fifteen minutes after spraying, I began to notice labdanum with the frankincense. The enigmatic effervescence was still present.

An hour and a half into the process, I perceived a column of incense rising toward my nose from my chest. As the drydown continued, what was playing on my skin was a beautiful combination of frankincense, labdanum, amber, and smokiness. I started humming “These are a few of my favorite things.” “It’s lovely,” murmured the DH. He’s the sort of guy who won’t wear fragrances with floral notes in them, but he wants to wear this one. Oh, yes.”

(Post sent by Maria B., and published by Andy)

(picture uploaded by raichinger on stock exchange, modified by Andy, www.sxc.hu)

So this is an easy blogging week and the outlook for the remaining days are as bright as a crisp September morning, with the sun rising into clean morning air. Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow is a must read for all of you, dear readers, who wish to see a little clearer through Tauer’s incense clouds. Thanks to Maria B., whom you all know by her comments here and on other blogs, and if you don’t you will discover a very talented writer tomorrow.
The next two days this blog features two reviews by Maria B. of two incense scents that I talked about a lot. Both are basically finished, and based on frankincense CO2 extracts, my personal frankincense favourite. One is the somewhat clean, minimalistic version. This one will be talked about Friday. The other discussed tomorrow is the final mod of the rich incense with lots of citrus, rose, castor,…

In order to be honest: After I do not know how many trials, endless pirouettes, smoky somersaults and rosy back flips, the W.-factor ended in some sort of desperation, running out of vocabulary to comment version xy versus zw. Thus, I was very happy to see Maria jumping into incense clouds, saving the W.-factor from frankincense stasis, and bringing in a fresh perspective.
In order to be honest the second time this morning: After I do not know how many trials, after having a previous version sent out to Mr. L and Mr. K, building in some of their input, neglecting some of their input, after quite some doubts, I knew it is time for Maria to think about it.

You know: At a certain point, I think others see more than the perfumer in his niche.

Thank you Maria!

(picture uploaded by raichinger on stock exchange, www.sxc.hu)

In ELLE’s September edition there will be a one page musing with lots of pictures on “Alchemy of Style”. This page, by Megan Deem, features inspirations of fashion designers when “they step out of the atelier and into the perfumery”. I must admit: Elle is not on my daily radar so far, but with the one-page article in hand I went on-linie and found a fragrance finder on ELLE. Well, Tauer Perfumes…I could not find there, but anything else would have surprised me and would endanger my niche status ;-)
So, before writing my next few lines, and in light of debates going on about perfume critics that I find personally strange and out of proportions: I am not affiliated to Elle, nor do I know the author, nor do I expect any kind of article about my niche perfumes and perfumery. Ah well..unfortunately! Trust me, Megan Deem, we could do something funny, that would truly interest your readers, a somewhat personal story…..ah well…
Be it: So I got this page to see and I started wandering from reading on-line on  Perfumesmellinthings (Marina’s post on Channel 19 and the new Channel 5 huge bottle “Eau Premiere”)  to LAMB frangrances by Gwen Stefani in the Elle article.

The later is fluty floral. Yes, no typo: ..”glamorous like a flute of sparkling champagne”.

This inspiration I truly liked. It could be mine. But I would replace the peach and musk by woods and ambergris.
One one hand, I really think that champagne is a lovely beverage, typically French, for it contains alcohol, and needs time and patience until it is matured and ready to drink. Like with many French things it is expensive and there is no real substitute.
Second, I think there is a hidden dirtiness in champagne, a second line, just a hint. It is this musky cepes mushroom, this little dirty cellar where baron and baroness or his mistress…well you know what I mean! I think champagne is glamorous not only because of images of half-naked women dancing in smoky, red carpet shows in the 20-ies, with men in black drinking bubbly wine; it is glamorous because the rich of today drink it and the rich often produce sparkling stories…

Now: I imagine fashion designers, who still design fashion and are not only marketing tigers, to think about bodies all the time, and how to set new lines to contours and shapes. In a sense, a perfume does the same. It brings out body contours and lines. Thus, I indeed feel that fashion designers thinking about perfumes might bring in an expertise and a way of addressing bodies that is refreshing for us perfumers, thinking more in roses and other notes.

There is yet another line, bringing fashion design and perfumery together: Revealing beauty by hiding most of it.

Finally we got there. Yesterday, I launched my website in its new design. Starting here on www.tauerperfumes.com you will find the new pages. But wait!, wait!, do not follow the link yet. First a few more words on bottles and journeys.
One reason why building up an entire new CMS based website was: Getting the chance to be a little bit closer to my clients and folks interested in who we are and what we do. Other reasons were: Easier language maintenance, options to add fun stuff and add ons, flexibility in adding content and keeping the pages up to date.
Thus, while working with dry code and boring php and brain killing stuff that I do not understand but know how to use, I had visionary hallucinations and php code induced flashes of what to do next. One of these has materialized.

Thus, a bottle flew over the ocean, a 50 ml flacon containing the epically described “Hyacinth and a mechanic” trial. In a white box with a flyer, the bottle arrived at its first of a hopefully long series of stops. The bottle is on a journey. From one perfume lover to the next. Who gets it may try the fragrance and can send me feedback, critical comments or any other word of appraisals or disgust and I will publish the comments on my website, together with a map showing where the bottle was so far. Of course, I couldn’t help sending the hyacinth to an angel first…..
I hope the bottle will travel a long way, crossing borders and frontiers, from continent to continent.
Here you find the idea described and here is the first critic.
Fragrant greetings!

This is going to be a very busy day, driving forth and back and forth again and a lot of preparatory work for next week, looking at the inner side of things, digging deep into some php details… more later next week.
Thus, I send you fragrant greetings and a picture of what a pepperoni looks like inside. Well, I guess you all know, but isn’t it lovely, this contrasting colors and shapes?
Enjoy your upcoming week end