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Before reading anything else: Visit Helg’s perfumeshrine now and read her thoughts on the Incense rosé. …. go now!

Besides other sentences, I like her mentioning of the Incense extrême very much, positioning the two incenses nicely….”the monch chanting in his horse hair shirt”. And here is why I liked this monch so much: Not because I thought “church!” when composing… (I am -if anything- protestant, and hence miss the incense church tradition, and Incense extrême is no church scent in my nose). It was more because with her sentence and the chant in her post she made a link. I never thought about it, but suddenly it was there. If there was music that would fit with the Incense extrême, then it would be this piece by Steve Reich. (I rediscovered this CD a while after the fragrance was finished when making room for other stuff….) 

Since a couple of months I am listening to Steve Reich’s “Proverbe” with increasing pleasure. If there was chant for the Incense extrême, it would be this minimalist master piece. now… here’s a thought: The next fragrance could be something fitting with Steve Reich’s “City Life, It’s been a honeymoon, can’t take no mo!”….. that would cry for a fast beat scent, fully loaded with aldehydes, and the fitting introduction video would be grey masses passing by an observer, in a city, coming up an escalator…something like that.  

But now….let’s go back to our minimalist bottles and pour those minimalist juices.

Here you find some hints on it on Wikipedia.

 And, finally, after yet another much to warm January around here. Todays picture as proof:  hazelnut flower seen January 2008 around Zurich

Mr Luckyscent and me exchanged a few mails regarding the LA trip. So, here is the date: Saturday, March 29, 2008. I will be there early afternoon until later in the evening.

And here is what you can do, if you happen to live in the area: Mark the date March 29  in your calender. It is fixed.

And here is what I will do until then. Think about what to bring with me and what to tell you. I simply can’t talk about wet sheep every time…

And before leaving this blog’s backend: I have spent my night with the latest rose trial, and did not sleep well. But this time waking up was all night long a pleasure……

The highlight of today, besides a sun rising in about 20 minutes, setting a clean sky into fire (see below the picture for a snapshot of yesterday’s evening sky, seen from within the train), besides this natural beauty the highlight today is a fellow blog. Welcome to the Beauty Source, the blog of a shop in Portland, and today’s feature is the passion of a Swiss guy. Read the interview here on the Beauty Source Blog by FEZ….And find out what to do if searching the perfect scent…

The shop actually is more than a shop. It is a spa and boutique, a temple, and I am proud to provide some smoking incense, and I can’t wait to see my l’air du désert marocain on FEZ shelves soon!
A beautiful day today!

It is end of January and I can feel it: Spring is coming, to warm our blood, make us sing and dance again, and dream of summer bloom…. the joy of anticipation of all good things that are coming our way this year.
Picture: Tulip again in Zurich, this time its profile against a semi-blue sky

Picture: evening sky in the train

So the weather lady tells us about the weather to come, she tells us about sun here and there, pointing towards imaginary spots on a digital map, and as every evening she tells us about temperatures on the “Hörnli”. So , this Saturday we wonder why and what. Hörnli? What the ….On Sunday we wanted to set things straight. And see the sun. And look out for first signs of spring outside the mall and its Eastern decorated shops.
Picture: Tulip in a glass in Zurich…signs of spring: tulips in the shops

The expedition to the Hörnli. 1 hour by bus and train, 2 hours hiking (we chose the longer tour) and voilà, there we are.On top of little pick surrounded by clouds, wind and winter elements. at least, some mountains beneath the clouds….
the way out of winter?

It is like after every other party. The day after you have to clean up. That’s what I will do. Tomorrow. And the days after tomorrow cleaning and arranging papers continues: Together with greeting cards came a big thick fat envelop, grey, with tons of paper inside that I won’t use because I do my taxes electronically. Yes, right….the tax office comes early these days. I guess they just want to make sure that we all pay our duty while we still can ;-)

Well, then, be it.

My own private highlight towards the end of this week will be answering interview questions….like……”what are your deciding factors that may lead you to work with some people over others?”  ….

So there are these things that you do kind of serially. Like coming up with the same resolutions year after year, coming up with new fragrances, like having the same thoughts on what to mix together from one perfume to the next….”I should put some rose in it!”….and the serial ideas of how to share your joy when you are done with a fragrance in the sense that it is ready for the perfume lovers, and then there is this serial event where you remember how old you are getting (and I do not talk hairdresser here….!), year after year, contrasting to how old you feel.
Today we face the climax of serial andy: Official launch date of the Incense extrême, giving away samples of the next one: Incense rosé, with rose in it …;-)!, and a birthday….

Thus, if you want to get your sample of the Incense rosé, mail your coordinates to: perfumer(at)tauerperfumes.com . And if you do not see the e-mail address any more, then the samples are gone.

Yes…the samples are gone, now.

Fragrant greetings and may your day be as joyful as mine!

It is raining again and the affair with spring in January was more a one night stand than anything serious. But, the last two days were gorgeous with the light and temperatures feeling like March. It reminded us that things change to the better now and that the cleaning forces of winter come to an end and leave room again for decadency, joy and dance in spring. Away from these clean candles and out into the green swamp!
While waiting for spring, here an interesting thought about the two incenses, after having read PerfumePosse before running out of the house this morning. Maybe you want to read their thoughts first here:
I never thought about it, maybe I am wrong altogether, but in a sense the Incense extrême is a skin scent, staying close to the skin and mixing into its wearer’s scent aura, to use Chandler’s words “wrapping” its wearer, whereas the Incense rosé (that I am wearing right now this rainy morning with great joy…two puffs keep you going for eternities) is more on “the take me over”- side, taking quite some room for itself on the stage. In a sense, the Incense rosé with its castor note is more on the dark and dirty side. The French side of perfumes.
Now, this is -of course- a rough, “early in the morning” thought, but you might go one step further: Is this the dichotomy of European versus American fragrances? Wrapping versus taking room?
But then: Maybe it is not such a good idea to think about one’s fragrances in these if you are the creator. Creators tend to be blind.

So, without further thinking, we wait for tomorrow, when finally the first of the two, the Incense extrême, is ready and we can hit the button and forget about it and start thinking more about the Incense rosé and other ongoing  experiments.

First a big THANK YOU for your comments on my last post. The W.-factor insists on telling you that he likes my look with shorter hair. And the thinking hair is not issue to the W.-factor, too. Now, having said this, we may continue….

So, I have this plant (a Bromelia), that sits next to the orchids, that I saved from the waste bin many years ago and that blooms about once a year for weeks.  A trick on the side: If Bromelia don’t bloom, then make sure they are seeing the sun from time to time, place an apple next to it and pack the plant and the apple for about 1-2 weeks in a clear plastic bag. The ethylene that is produced by the apple induces the flowering of Bromelia.

It is rather a boring plant without flowers, looking somewhat wild, but the blue-violet single flowers, with a threefold symmetry, sitting on a purple bulb, are wonderful. Delicate, without scent and blooming one after the other.

One after the other is also my approach when it comes to point of sales for my fragrances. Also in light of some disappointments in the past. And in light of my artisanal character, being a one-man show with little ambition to grow big /fast. Nevertheless, the last days/weeks have seen me communicating with folks in the north-eastern part of Germany, and north-western part of the US. More details will follow of course later.
The result of these talks result in two huge parcels that are leaving Switzerland these days.

It is very exciting.
Picture: My Bromelia with flowers, coming out of a purple-pinkish bulb, one after the other

There was no way around it. Even if I fought the idea successfully for months. I had to see the hairdresser. She is nice and young and told me that my hair is beautiful, just getting a little bit thin. “Well, honey”, I told her, “first it is getting thinner and then it falls out altogether”.

“yes”, she replied. Leaving no room for hope.

Well… be it. I have my empty perfume bottles that wait to be filled up (Rêverie au jardin), incense samples for next week (launch Jan. 23!), and a couple of great things to look forward to, like sniffing with Vero in about 2 hours.

Fragrant greetings from a guy who just lost about 30% of his hair, but not his joy. For proof see picture: Before and after.

Have a wonderful weekend!

  before…..

after…

I am right now in a thinking phase. Like in the first 30 seconds of “also sprach Zarathustra” by Deodato,   (I am listening to it while writing these lines, maybe I am a little bit old-fashioned here…but I LOVE IT!) , I  not know yet where to go to with some ideas. It is these weeks before spring. Everything seems ready, the narcissus and hyacinths are still buried under ice cold earth but the tips of the coming bloom are prepared to grow into the air, just waiting for warmer air flying in from the Atlantic. Thanks and praise for the golf stream, by the way! Without this heat pump inside the Atlantic shortening our winters and making them acceptable, I would have left Switzerland years ago. I can not imagine living in a place like Novosibirsk or Anchorage…

Thus, having the Essencia price list and newsletter in my hands; thinking… about a tauer perfumes newsletter …technically I am there since I revamped my website, using Joomla this is easy, practically I am not sure whether there is a need/wish for it.
…about the next scent projects and the existing ones, like the vetiver that sits there, sort of finished. Maybe I should combine the newsletter with the scent projects, well…. I guess I should.
…about prices rising everywhere, including some raw materials I am using, wondering when they will finally show up in the inflation numbers, adding up to the perfect storm that we are seeing in the stock markets and real world economy these days

…thinking about some absolutes that my preferred supplier Essencia has in stock these days such as acacia, foin coupé …. I need to get samples there!

…thinking about real important things like making sure I have enough stock of the l’air du désert marocain…

Fragrant greetings from someone who read “Also sprach Zarathustra” in his 20-ies and never really got it.