NOVEMBER-DECEMBER: SUGAR AND SPICE

As soon as summer fades and “Back to school” is behind us, it is hard to avoid, come November, the slow build up to Christmas. It starts with Halloween, carries through Thanksgiving in North America, then Saint Nicholas in the Benelux countries, the patron saint of children (Sinterklaas in Dutch that gave rise to Santa Claus), followed by Saint Lucy’s Day, the festival of lights in Scandinavia, and culminates with the Yuletide season and New Year’s celebrations involving feasting and spending time with loved ones.

In a way, those holidays distract us from the fact that days are getting shorter and the weather increasingly inclement. As summer seem to extend further and further into autumn though, when the weather does finally turn cold, it is often a welcomed opportunity to wear a soft cardigan, drink some hot cocoa and put a blanket on at night. A chill in the air is generally what is required to wear heavier scents that act as an olfactive comforter and conjure up cups of spiced mulled wine, sweet indulgences and an idealized cosy night by the fireplace.

These olfactive and culinary associations are based on scent memories that influence our selection of perfumes, whether consciously or not. My personal history brings me back to my time in Belgium as a teenager when in November, boy scouts used to knock on doors selling marzipan sweets, with their distinctive sweet almond paste flavour, to collect funds for their summer camps. Or to my afterschool snack of speculoos cookies dipped in milk, with their mix of warm spices, such as cinnamon and cloves, and candied brown sugar. They were close in flavour to gingerbread cookies, but with a much stronger cinnamon than ginger taste and a distinctive caramel note, offering a more soothing than zingy experience. The emotions associated with those memories translate into how I feel when wearing scents that feature predominantly those notes, how comforting they feel, how they immediately take me back to a moment of pleasure and joy. Such is the magic of perfume.

In this edition, I decided to focus on cinnamon predominant fragrances but I recognize that this is as arbitrary a selection as any: others may have a completely different scent association with this season or alternative scent memories associated with cinnamon and ambery spicy notes.

CINNAMON (Cinnamomum verum)

Originally from Ceylon (nowadays Sri Lanka) and indigenous to both that island and India, cinnamon is still currently cultivated there as well as in the Seychelles and Madagascar, and has been widely used for millennia in food preparation as well as perfumery. The bark of the cinnamon is harvested, and once cut into “chips” that are ground and can be used as a spice or distilled into an essential oil. Interestingly, it is not just the flavour of cinnamon that explains its use in food preparation but also its antifungal properties that inhibit the growth of bacteria on meat, thus serving as a preservative since ancient times.

Warm, spicy, gourmand, powdery, sweet, it immediately calls to mind the atmosphere of Christmas with its spicy baked goods, mulled wine and all its warmth and familiarity. How did it come be representative, along with nutmeg, cloves and ginger, of the festive season in Europe and much of the West?

Although already known in Ancient Rome (as well as Egypt) and used burnt like incense along with other spices and resins on festive occasions or in the private houses of wealthy Romans, it is during the late middle-ages and Renaissance period that these spices really penetrated the European market via the opening of the spice route. From the 16th century onwards, with the “discovery” of Ceylon by the Portuguese, first, then the Dutch, English and French, who exported the spice to Europe via the various merchant companies.

Because of the high cost of the spice and its rarity, cinnamon as well as other spices, were reserved mostly for the wealthy and royalty. Since Christmas was a time of great feasting, many spices including cinnamon became synonymous with that time of year with traditional seasonal dishes and drinks being centered around their aroma.

Classified in perfumery as a warm spice (“persistent in the mouth” as described by legendary perfumer Jean Caude Ellena, commenting on the perception of warm spices versus cold ones), the components that have the greatest impact on its olfactive profile are cinnamic aldehyde and eugenol (a molecule it shares with cloves, which is actually frequently used in conjunction with cinnamon in perfume creations).

Its long use in perfumery is attested, if nothing else, by being a key component of Kyphi, the perfume of Ancient Egypt, which is currently the oldest perfume formula still in our possession, (and that one can still discover and smell, if one cares to visit the perfume conservatory in Versailles, the Osmothèque…).

Given our cultural association, at least in the West, of cinnamon with Christmas, I wanted to highlight a few very different takes on the use of the spice which, although versatile, is rarely the star element of a scent. The broad categories under which I have classified the perfumes are: spicy (meaning the spice note dominate), woody, ambery.

The one for those who need a fresh take

– Spicy: Eau d’Hermès

Created in 1951, by genius perfumer Edmond Roudnitska, this perfectly balanced creation is a monument to elegance. Personally I find a cologne with a warm spice aspect rather unusual due to the juxtaposition of both fresh and warm notes (looking back in time though, this wasn’t an entirely novel idea, as spice-scented eau de toilette such as l’eau d’ange featuring benzoin, coriander, clove, styrax, calamus and lemon were apparently quite in vogue during the Renaissance, so there you go: “plus ça change…” ).

Cinnamon tends to lend heft and sensuality to a scent, but in this case, the cologne-citrus structure of the perfume manages to keep the composition airy. The spices unfold after the first blast of citrus and aromatic notes have made their sparkling entrance. Immediately, the powdery cinnamon provides warmth and sensuality to the scent while coriander and cardamom, its “cooler” sisters, continue to act as a vertical lift to the composition. An addition of cumin, often perceived as body odor at first, is here perfectly judged and lends a slightly dirty lived-in aspect to the scent, which then transitions into an unexpected leather accord. In a nutshell, starting as a cologne, this ends up being a sexy, spicy, well-loved luxurious leather bag fragrance. There are obviously other colognes, there are many leather fragrances, as well as spice forward scents, but it’s the seamless melding of styles in this unique composition that is so unusual and beautiful.

Some might call this an old-fashioned fragrance (old-lady-like or, rather, old-gentleman-like , as this clearly leans more towards a masculine scent in my mind) and it is certainly miles away from any modern trend. But in my books, this is such a classically beautiful scent that to change an iota to this composition would be sacrilege. (Needless to say, L’eau d’Hermès has been reformulated many times since its creation, if only for regulatory reasons).

The one for those who need a cuddle

– Woody: Bois des isles (Chanel)

The woody direction is an obvious route to take for a cinnamon scent, as this spice’s essential oil is extracted from the ground bark of the cinnamon tree, so a woody element is part and parcel of this spice’s olfactive profile. As a prime example of this category, and possibly the oldest scent still in production featuring cinnamon, is the beautiful Bois des Isles by Chanel, two years shy of its centenary. It’s the “peanut butter and jelly” of combos, mixing warm spicy cinnamon and milky sandalwood, a pairing made in heaven.

To my nose, it is predominantly a sandalwood scent although according to industry lore there is not a single drop of Mysore sandalwood in the formula (even in older formulations, although Mysore sandalwood at this stage and for conservation reasons, is in any case not used in commercial perfumery). Be that as it may, and we will never know for sure, it still ranks as one of the finest renditions of the creamy sandalwood note, made sweeter and powderier by both the inclusion of cinnamon and an iris accord.

It of course bears a resemblance to another Chanel scent, Egoist, also a cinnamon/sandalwood combo, and, in a minor way, to Samsara by Guerlain (although the latter does not contain cinnamon). As Bois des Isles predates both scents, it would be fairer to say that they bear a resemblance to it, with Egoiste borrowing from its predecessor the cinnamon and sandalwood accord combined with the fruity peach note, and modernizing it.

It is a supremely comforting scent. A warm plush pashmina shawl that provides protection from the winter chill, a woody sweet lactonic hug mixed with the delicate fuzziness of a peach’s skin, the comforting creaminess of tropical flowers like Ylang whispering of distant and lush landscapes. In a nutshell, an elegant expensive scent that one imagines moneyed people would have worn in 1920/30s. This is also probably perceived by modern audiences as a bit of a vintage scent but it remains in my view the original sandalwood and cinnamon scent. For a “relatively” more modern take, as it was created more than 40 years ago, try Egoist.

The one for the gourmand lovers

– Ambery (with a musky and fruity facet): Ambre Narguilé by Hermès

Another Hermès scent, this one firmly a 21th century creation, that is as fruity as it is ambery in my view, (although no fruit notes are listed), and immediately evokes the sweet smell of a spicy apple pie and notes that are clearly in line with the seasonal scents we associated Christmas. Meant to be the evocation of scented tobacco used when smoking hookah (i.e. water pipes meant for vaporizing and then smoking flavored tobacco) to my nose, the first impression is unmistakably that of baked apples sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon.

This apple impression, initially juicy and yellow, slowly, to my nose, lets a curious “overly ripe” note emerge which might be amplified by the cinnamon, which lends warmth and sweetness to the composition and is supported by the balsamic and powdery notes of labdanum and tonka. The scent is fairly linear and has relatively low projection, and its ambery sweetness continues throughout its development. The elegant honey tobacco aspect, not immediately apparent, truly blooms in the mid development stages of the fragrance and manages to keep the scent from being a purely savoury experience, bringing back the fragrance to the concept behind its name.

My personal problem, and this is where the subjective part of scent experience and association is so hard, is that it also reminds me to some extent of cheap candles, Christmas flavoured teas and other such products that have hijacked the apple/cinnamon concept and used it in a myriad of ways in products around the festive season (pot pourri, diffusers, you name it ). It’s a personal association and in no way a critique of the brilliance of the composition but I’ve smelled it before, albeit less beautifully done. It has nothing to do with Ellena’s skill but more to do with how some accords and raw materials have been sort of “hijacked” by negative associations such as for example lavender with cleaning products, lemon with dish washer liquid, lilac with air freshners, etc..

In any case, it’s beautifully “of the season” so try it for yourself if sweet apple and cinnamon on a honeyed tobacco base appeals to you. This could be Christmas in a bottle.

The one for those who like fig scents…

– Spicy Fruity: Féminité du Bois by Serge Lutens

Ok, first of all, it smells nothing like a fig scent but I say that because there is something in the cedary dryness of this fragrance, associated with fruity plum notes, that bring back the milky wood/fruit accord of a lot of fig fragrances.

Built around Atlas cedar, spices and fruity notes and meant as an ode to Lutens’ love of Morocco, home to said tree and to colourful spice markets, Feminité du Bois (FDB) was ground breaking at the time of its release when woody perfumes were not generally marketed towards women. But if you recall, Bois de Isles (BDI) also had woods, fruit and spices in its composition, although producing an entirely different scent. I would say FDB is much fruiter, with the inclusion of a prune note alongside the peach, and also much spicier and drier than BDI.

No one talks about it and I’m not sure how successful the scent was but I still find it a completely modern scent, easy to wear, sweet without being overly so, sufficiently woody to appeal to men (if you care about those kinds of distinctions), invitingly fruity and jammy without falling into the fruit salad trap, musky and comforting when you need a refuge from the world. And who doesn’t nowadays.

The one for the independently minded

– Spicy Resinous: Eau Lente by Diptyque

Created in 1986 by Serge Kalouguine, a perfumer who is rarely mentioned and is responsible, along with one of the brand’s founders, Desmond Knox-Leet, for the older, more unusual and out-there scents of Diptyque, such as this one and l’Eau Trois (the odd and majestic terpenic myrrh bomb), as well as the commercially very successful l’Ombre dans l’eau.

L’Eau Lente claims to draw its inspiration from the lands of Alexander the Great ( I assume they mean ancient Greece, so let’s avoid an online debate about Macedonia here…) Personally, being generally a proponent of bitter scents and adverse to anything too sweet (you can imagine how a trip to Sephora or the Duty free perfume aisle makes me feel), I can’t help being intrigued by l’Eau Lente. I think the idea is to transport you to a time when, as mentioned earlier, cinnamon, spices and other resins were burnt as both religious rituals and a way for the ultra privileged to show off wealth and status. Personally, the evocative element of a perfume is very important and there is no denying that this scent does not entirely feel of this world.

I can image it both as perfume burnt in marble halls on the eve of battles, as the brand indicates, as well as a pomader (i.e. perforated ball-shaped container of aromatic substances, placed on a chain and worn as a scented jewel) worn during medieval times to ward off evil and disease. Unapologetically potent, resinous and spicy. Mystical holder of secrets, it whispers of realities beyond the realm of men. This is the scent of shape shifters and philosophers.

The opening is clearly a clove/eugenol bomb (as mentioned, eugenol is the main component of clove and also an important crucial element in cinnamon’s scent profile) that leans into the eucalyptus slightly mint-like aspect of clove. Following this first opening salvo, the bitterness is tempered by the powdery sweetness of cinnamon boosted by an amber accord of, I would guess, labdanum, Peru balsam and vanillin. The Oppoponax in the base brings the smoky vibe of the scent into focus. On the whole, although there are sweet resinous elements, I think this perfume showcases a different aspect of warm spices, less obviously foody and comforting and more mystical and powerful.

It’s not for everyone and certainly not a blind buy, but if you curious about another take on this spice far from cinnamon buns and do not insist on smelling like dessert, it’s worth a try..

Conclusion

There are clearly many more scent categories that have a spicy facet and have used cinnamon (in the amber family there is obviously Opium by YSL and in the floral/amber category Dior’s Poison comes to mind for instance…) I can’t list them all. I just wanted to offer a selection of very different perfumes that showcase cinnamon in an original way.

For further reading on the matter, I recommend the excellent magazine supplement done by NEZ Magazine and LMR on Cinnamon.

Finally I will leave you with a poem, which I will include at the end of each of my seasonal selection. Written during the American Civil war, it is as relevant as ever.

Happy holidays everyone, please feel free to send me the names of some of your own favourite cinnamon fragrances, I’m always excited to get good recommendations.

Christmas Bells (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)