Heart Beet

[Jenjin]

Raw, wet beets, pulsating blood musk, and raw wild ginger.

 

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

 

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

 

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

― Walt Whitman

 

 

 

 

[jiggahava]

Right away I get a pickled candied ginger that comes storming out of the gate. The ginger is all I can smell.

 

Couple of hours in, no beets whatsoever. All ginger, but there is a slight metallic tinge I'm getting.

 

Many hours later this scent remains beet-free and the ginger has lost its strong edge and is a soft, musky ginger. This is probably the best part of the stage, but i wanted beets! Kind of bummed that I get no beets out of it. I could chalk it up to skin chem, but I think the ginger kicked all the other notes asses.

 

Hoping aging will make this guy more beet-y.

[ghoulnextdoor]

I was a little scared to try this one because I've read that the same component that gives petrichor, that old rain-whisperer, that wet, mineralic tang, is also present in beets. Geosmin. This irregular sesquiterpenoid explains why I do not care for the scent of petrichor and cannot stomach beets. Except for pickled beets, which I love, but I'm a bit of a pickle fiend; you could probably pickle up an old boot, and I'd love that, too.

 

But in Heart Beet there is only the swiftest, most fleeting whiff of dirt and stony dampness and then the immediacy of what I think of as shampoo ginger. We have a profusion of ginger-but-not-quite-ginger growing wild in our backyard, and when you dig it up, it looks just like ginger, and it has that same fiery-floral tang of fresh ginger too, but there's something that smells a little soapy about it, as well, which gave us pause and made us think maybe we shouldn't be eating it! We looked it up, and we are pretty sure it's "shampoo ginger," which could be eaten (but it's bitter) but is more often used in toiletries and cosmetics. And then, at the back of that zesty-floral-freshness is a murky musk, slightly sweet, subtly earthy hum that is so weirdly, unexpectable wearable.  

 

This scent is as if you dug up a magenta-blooded, lumpy, heart-shaped taproot and deemed it a quirky imaginary friend and shared all your juicy secrets with it...and then that dang beet tried to give you some sassy advice.

[frizzlechicken]

This one took me on a wild ride, and it's mainly that it needed time to settle. I blind-bottled it and it arrived over a week ago. I tried it the next day and was sure I hated it. All I could smell was dirt (like fresh earth) floating on the air of a mid-spring day, and NEROLI NEROLI NEROLI. I very nearly sold it right off then and there, but because I am a sucker for unusual things and cool label art, I decided to let it rest a bit.

 

Well damn! This morning I sniffed it again and thought, well, let's give it one more shot. I am so glad I did! Now that it's rested, all the notes seem to have blended and smoothed. Totally gone is the earthy smell; I still detect the fresh spring air when wet, but mostly now it's blood musk, ginger and neroli (much quieter). It dries down to mostly blood musk and I have enjoyed the ride. It will be lovely for spring. Heart Beet, shantay you stay.

[samanare]

I don't know how much of it is the blood note vs the beet note, but definitely the ginger does not dominate the scent. The closest comparison I can make is to a more spicy, root version of pomegranate, deep red-purple and almost fruity. I do get a hint of ginger, bringing a little zing and adding to the root quality of the scent. Overall I think the beet is dominating the scent. I don't get anything that particularly reads to me as blood. More a deep, almost wine like root scent.

[Tamarinda]

Holy toledo, this perfume is amazing. It stays consistent from the decant to my skin, with a nose-catching raw ginger supported by the blood musk and the sweet earthiness of the beets. I'm really loving that this smells like young raw ginger, all fresh and spicy and utterly drool-worthy. The blood musk is behaving on me, for once. I amp this note like crazy so it's the only reason I didn't go ahead and blind bottle it. What a beauty! I need moar.

 

I get medium plus projection with modest application. It goes strong for at least six hours and doesn't fade until around the nine hour mark.

[elissamay]

This is spectacular. Unique, totally unexpected, great throw, great longevity. Fresh but somehow also musky, sweet but somehow also tangy, dirty yet also somehow clean. An absolute standout and a total surprise Luper winner for me.

 

Bonus: If you love the white ginger in Implacable Beautiful Tyrant hair gloss, pair that gloss with this perfume. Total ginger bliss. I wore the combo to my friends' wedding and I was a ginger tornado of love.

Edited May 16 by elissamay

[dancingchair]

It's garden season and this smells like a freshly dug up root vegetable in the best way possible. There's a cool aspect to this that lends it the impression of clumps of wet earth. Somehow it's wet without being aquatic. I get strong helpings of both beet and ginger. This is probably the best ginger note I've ever encountered, which is good because it is the star player on me. Usually, ginger sticks firmly in the carbonated drink category or the soapy category to me, but this is so true to life. It's got a bite to it, but it isn't overly spicy. It's crisp and clean without being soapy. Gorgeous! The beets are a close second, giving the entire perfume a deep, dark fuchsia hue. It's a little fruity, but not in a sweet way. I agree that it's a bit like dry red wine, but it's too rooty and earthy to be wine.

 

The scarlet musk is definitely present but it's more like the scarlet musky beet juice that the ginger and beets are soaked in. The ginger and beets are so bright and strong that the scarlet musk is the shadow they're casting. I swear I sometimes smell the dirtiest, most earthy patchouli from the waft. Maybe it's mixed into the scarlet musk?

Summary: bright, zesty ginger and wine-dark beets soaked in scarlet musk. This perfume is the moment you peel the muddy skin off the ginger and beets. I was not expecting to like this one so much, but it is so incredibly earthy and complex and wearable.

[LavenderCoffee]

This simple combo is unexpectedly fresh and delicate, with a subtle, pleasantly earthy sweetness and an unobtrusive pulse of blood musk tying it all together. 

I am not getting candied or pickled ginger, and it's not even as sharp as I was expecting raw ginger to be. Plus the beet is a bit sweet, and the earthiness does not read as anything dirt or soil adjacent, so they just harmonize so perfectly. The musk got a bit bigger since I slathered this and let it settle in, but it's still way more mellow than any red musk blend I've tried recently.

Honestly I think I would have guessed vegetal musk, thanks to the beety goodness, or maybe I'm just not super familiar with blood musk. Either way it's not what I was imagining and I dig it. Give this one a try!

[artisjok]

So glad I decided to follow my curiosity & blind bottle this one! 
It’s simultaneously dirty, clean, sweet, spicy, musky and just overall throbbing.
Despite being so much, it’s not complicated. It’s just genius. 
 

Plus, if you’re a Tom Robbins fan, this scent scratches an itch that has been longing…

 

“The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.”

Edited May 19 by artisjok

[Ennikar]

Tested ~36 hours from the mail. Very weird, in a way I think is good? The previous reviews seem contradictory, but they made sense as soon as I tried it on skin. There's a ginger opening, but like a relatively mild wet ginger straight out of the ground, and the beets smell like the ground during rain. The overall impact is indeed both clean and earthy, spicy but not aggressive. I'm usually very not into soapy stuff, but this works. The blood musk is doing something, I assume, but it's very quiet, I only get it mildly in the drydown. Overall it's, well, interesting -- both pleasant and not something a person should ever smell like. Ended up on my "atmospheric" shelf rather than the "fruity/fresh", "spicy", "pretty/floral", "aggressive", or "masculine" shelves.

Late drydown, it's a pleasant, slightly spicy musk. The throw on this is good, and the longevity is pretty extensive, still a few inches of throw after 10 hours..

 

Other impressions: wet, "that's got some spice on it", a few minutes dry, "there's a little bit of dryer sheets but not in a bad way? And something else balancing it." A couple hours after application, someone noted they wouldn't have called the ginger.