Chocolat Viennois

[doomsday_disco]

Turns out this is a thing that vampires are into. A warm mug of dark chocolate and cream with a dribble of blood.

[VioletChaos]

Exactly as advertised!  

Seriously, though, in the bottle the chocolate is dark, thick, rich. It's the kind of chocolate where the cream hardly even makes an indent, no blood to speak of even. All things obliterated by the chocolatey chocolate!

Once on the skin, it all starts to morph and almost reverse course, with the blood becoming the dominant note and the chocolate receding. At full dry down, the scent has become a spicy confection of blood with the chocolate acting as a delicate, sugary foil for it. The cream has left the building entirely, but this duo is a heady brew on its own.

In all, a lighter throw than you might expect given the notes. I'd call this a sexy daytime scent or a playful something to wear on a casual first or weeknight date.

Given the notes involved, I'm really hoping to see a change in a few months' time that will allow it to deepen and get a little more complex. As it now stands, it's perfectly lovely, and light enough that I'd be interested in playing around with layering, maybe with something like Graveyard Dirt, to make an "alternate universe" version of Penny Dreadful! 

[asoursweetsixteen]

AMAZING. A MA ZING! TRULY

 

one of the two scents I bought at NYCC, I got a decant of this but it had yet to arrive but upon smelling it I knew it'd have to be a full bottle. in said bottle, it is 99% chocolate (very comparable to Cacao & Scorched Milk) and 1% blood, and as Tom pointed out to me as I was smelling it, the blood would come out later. basically immediately upon putting it on, BOOM bloody blood. the switch up is so quick and stark, but the chocolate compliments the blood so beautifully, and the bit of cherry makes me think of one of those fruit filled chocolates. it's decadent without being gourmand.

 

I can't recommend this enough, it's a must buy if you like blood AND/OR the lab's chocolate note

[feyofthefellwood]

I knew I should have just bottled this, because it's exactly what I hoped for from these notes. It's simple, creamy dark chocolate with a hint of whatever the blood note is. I'm unsure if it's a fruit note (pomegranate?) or dragon's blood, but it gives the scent a little bit of a perfumey edge that keeps it from being entirely hot chocolate. I'll update the review if I can figure out what the blood note reminds me of. 

[doomsday_disco]

This smells like hot cocoa in the vial, but as soon as it goes on, it's cut through with a blast of dragon's blood. It ends up being more dragon's blood than cocoa on me, although the cocoa is definitely present throughout wear.

 

I don't feel the need to upgrade this to a bottle, but it was fun to get to try this. I'd recommend it to someone who is looking for a chocolate scent with a spooky, non-gourmand twist. 

[Assimbya]

This was my first experience with a chocolate scent, and I was a little nervous about it, as I generally don't like gourmands. But I do love both hot chocolate and vampires, so the premise was impossible to resist.

 

I get a creamy milk chocolate in the decant and wet on my skin, with just a hint of a spicy sweetness from the blood that comes off almost candy-like at first. As others have said, on drydown  the blood notes comes out more and more, and it's unquestionably dragon's blood resin, which true to form on me is a spicy floral. There's some chocolatey sweetness throughout, but the dragon's blood resin is the indisputable center of the scent, with just a hint of something metallic which makes the blend more truly blood-like. It's like the inverse of Seven Inches of Blood, which is a very cool effect - this is Carmilla putting on her pretense of civility to fit into polite society drinking chocolate with the blood concealed, while Seven Inches of Blood is her in revealed as vampiric, with still a hint of that entrancing chocolate. It's a very cool effect to compare them, and I've found I can't stop thinking about Chocolat Viennois, even though it doesn't match my usual taste.

Edited November 8 by Assimbya

[Elspethdixon]

In the imp/wet - chocolate caaaake. This is sweeter and richer than the dark chocolate of, say, Candy Butcher. There’s a hint of something cool and sweet that must be the cream. What there is NOT is the gag-worthy reek of rotting blood, so the blood note is thankfully not whatever was in Mischief HG.

 

Freshly applied - Once on my skin the rich chocolate fudge cake dies down and the soft cream comes forward, along with wisps of slightly spicy floral incense: the blood note must be dragon’s blood.
 

Fifteen minutes in - You can tell it’s a chocolate scent, but the hyper realistic gourmand fudge cake opening has given way to a soft, feminine dragon’s blood and cream.

 

About an hour in, it’s settled into a soft cocoa scent. Very close to the skin and not much throw. Meanwhile, I keep getting whiffs of floral dragon’s blood scent from where I applied it to my hair, to the point where I thought at first that it was left-over rose scent from the Mircalla I wore yesterday (before I remembered that I’d washed my hair and it couldn’t be).

 

By four hours in it was only detectable as a cocoa skin scent if I put my nose right against my skin, but the right-at-the-skin cocoa lasted all day.

[Frills]

Oh it's so good. I'm learning I really like the Lab's chocolate/cacao notes but this one is especially good. It's not super foody with the dragon's blood note, it's just something I can't stop huffing. It does fade after a couple of hours but I don't mind reapplying, I love every phase of it from Hot Chocolate to warm dark dragon's blood.

[Little Bird]

Marshmallow Chick Sanguinem Menstruum is one of my favorite bpals (perhaps even my #1 favorite these days), and the opening of Chocolat Viennois is like MCSM with a chocolate covered marshmallow instead of just marshmallow.  A similar fluffy sweetness, honeyed creaminess, and tangy blood musk feel.  When I first got Chocolat Viennois in the mail, it smelled like that and lasted for hours.  However, after having Chocolat Viennois for several weeks, I still get that chocolate covered MCSM impression, but only for about the first half hour before it dries down much stronger on the dragon's blood incense and it's very much a dark, smoky, headshop incense on my skin.  It settles into equal parts a strong milk chocolate and strong, burning dragon's blood incense.  In the drydown, I don't love it as much.  I already own a lot of chocolate incense oils, and this one is too heavy and intense for me to reach for it a lot.  I tend to find it sort of suffocating and too much after an hour.  That said, if you are looking for sweet chocolate and slightly ashy, smoky dragon's blood incense, this one is strong and long lasting.