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EL NUEVO PURITANO 2011 (LE): (Company says: The wicked wrath of moral panic: unmoving, rigid oak, dry leather, tonka, gunpowder tea, and pious olibanum with a core of perverse and furtive vanilla bean, bay leaf, clove bud, and lime.)

In bottle: Really unusual. Extremelu complex, and difficult to parse at first sniff. I’d say oak, olibanum, bay, vanilla, and lime are most noticeable, but all elements are presenat, and nothing is particularly dominant. The elements play together beauttifully in the bottle, particularly the smokey tea and the leather. The clove/bay combination was nothing I’d have imagined, but form an interesting effect. There is something pleasantly old fashioned about this, like my Uncle John’s childhood room, long abandoned in my Grandparent’s house and preserved as a sort of shrine to my grand father’s aspirations. Wet: The leather, lime, tea, and bay strengthen on the skin, changing the balance without losing complexity. It is the masculine side of androgenous without losing delicacy or that pleasing old fashioned feel. As it warms, the clove comes out to play. This is a poem with each minute of change a new line. Oak and leather and lime taking new partners in the dance as various things come to the fore. This is lovely and strange, and impossible to explain. One minute it’s tea and lime, the next olibanum and smoke. I’m am completely charmed, but unable to say exactly why. Dry: Mmmmm… Old oak chest, with the ghost of all the other elemen6ts. A wonderful, complex, and irreplacable addition to my collection.

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011