Halôa

[hlinspjalda]

Wine grapes, myrrh, frankincense and olive leaf, and the warm scent of offertory cakes.

In the vial: Fruity sweet, with a twitch of olives. This smells very appetizing.

Wet: The fruit develops a complexity as the base of resins develops. There's something almost citrusy-vanilla about it, the "orange cake" note I sometimes get. That tinge of green olive is still there, too.

Twenty minutes: Ahhh, lots of resin now. There's a lot of sweet warmth, hardly any fruit at all, and still some kind of a baked goods aroma. That green olive note has flattened somewhat and now comes across simply as herbal. I rather like it.

One hour: This has quite a presence. It's unusual, lingering, and intriguing. It's not quite mysterious, but if I smelled this in the air I would certainly pursue it until I discovered its source and knew what it was. It's mostly resins with some herb, a sharp sweetness, and something foody, pretty much as advertised.

Two hours: The herbiness is tending to overshadow the resin now. No fruitiness at all now, but that baked goods aroma is still there. It rather reminds me of my half-wheat bread recipe when it's just beginning to bake in the bread machine. This is really quite interesting.

Three hours: Still pretty much the same. It's really kind of fascinating, although more as a scent than as an elective perfume. I'm not sure how often I'd want to smell like this, but I rather enjoy the unusualness of it.

Four hours: More resinous now. I find this one very evocative, very fairly representative of the concept it's supposed to be conveying. It makes me daydream about ancient Greece.

Six hours: Mostly resin now, extremely pleasant though. Just a tinge of that olive note; the grapes and offertory cakes are long gone now.

[asciident]

Wet: Super fruity.

 

First on: Spicy (myrrh?) fruit. No offertory cake at all.

 

Dry: Faded away.

[aquazoo]

Starts with a blast of butterscotch candy. The baking and the frankencense & myrrh — a little bit of cardamom. Wow and wow again! Yummy. Beautiful. I want to bake.

[Lamia]

In the bottle this smells nasty. On skin, it starts sour but almost immediately (thank goodness) it warms up.

 

This is a pleasant enough scent, but no one element leaps out and dances with me.

 

 

[Monster]

In the bottle: Sweet, boozy cake.

 

Wet: I immediatly get incense and what I believe is olive leaf. The cake is just adding a gentle sweetness to this, not too much at all, it's just perfect. There's a "butter rum" quality to this as well. Very pretty!

 

Dry: As this dries the wine note comes out a bit more while the frankincense and myrrh amp up like craaaazy. This almost reminds me of a lighter, boozy version of All Souls.

 

Overall: I dunno why I've had this stored away for so long. I'm not usually a fan of the Yules blends but this one is really nice. Aloa is delicious, mildly sweet and filled with glorious church incense.

[Teaotter]

I'm not sure which year I have, though from the descriptions, I suspect it's the 2007 version.

 

In the bottle: doughnuts and wine

 

Wet: This doesn't have the butter and sweetness of the cake notes I'm used to. Instead, it smells more like yeast doughnuts to me, with a layer of sweet grape-y wine. I get no incense at all at this point.

 

Dry: The doughnut smell backs off to a mildly sweet, fruity-olive-oil-tinged warmth, with the incense grounding the whole thing. The notes balance incredibly well on me, just warm smooth sweetness with a just enough herbiness for interest. The throw is mild but there, and it lasts for several hours.

[Gold Dust Kitten]

2006 version:

 

The Lab's usual grape note is my mortal enemy. I would have never tried this if it wasn't frimped, and I'm pleasantly surprised at how beautiful this scent is. It smells like cake with juicy dark fruit, warm resins, and golden olive oil. The olive note is what smoothes this blend out so well.

[Gwydion]

In bottle: The cake is by far the strongest note. I would swear there was a touch of orange glaze in this, though I could be miss parsing the grape. The incense is very soft, as is the olive leaf. Wet: Still cake dominant. This is a surprisingly clever use of grape, which doesn’t usually work on me, but does here. They are soft, but I am really liking the olive leaf in this and I think this is a particularly good myrrh. Dry: surprisingly like cotton candy or pipe Tabacco. The cakes and grapes are just really interesting together.

[milo]

This is the 06 version, most generously frimped to me by a lovely forumite.

 

In the imp and on wet, a spicy white wine, and though I normally don't like white wine notes, I REALLY like this. Maybe the spice is tempering this a bit, or maybe the age. Dry, there's more of a cakey note with spice, and just a teeny bit of alcoholic wine. Oh, this is soooo good, it's a non-foody foody, just the kind I like. Umm, this would be a definite bottle list if it were to come back as a Yule. Yum!!

[inhumation]

Ah, nicely aged! sharp berry wine and myrrh at first which dries down to a subtle cake note. Quite lovely.

Edited January 4, 2015 by inhumation

[Deliciousness]

version 2014

 

In the imp: sweet, creamy, floral fruitiness.

 

Wet on skin: interesting mix of warm, sweet, slightly fruity, dessert-like incense. I can't pinpoint the fruit scent, but it smells "red". The olive leaf is giving an interesting creaminess, almost waxiness to the blend, reminiscent of beeswax. The cakes must be adding to the edible dessert like aspect.

 

Drydown: Warm, lightly sweet incense, with a touch of myrrh and dark fruit. I find this is a light scent and wears close to the skin ... but I didn't put a lot on application. Very pretty.

[thekittenkat]

This is for the 2014 version.

 

In the decant: All the notes mixing nicely.

 

Wet: Cake with all the other notes.

 

The dry-down: This is very much like Haloa of past years--yummy cake baked in olive oil w/ wine grapes as a garnish, juiced over the top, with a dish of myrrh, frank, and olive leaf close by.

[Psuke]

I love this scent, I think it's become one of my favorites. On me it's more like a rich fruity wine, not green at all, with the resins in the back keeping it from becoming overly sweet. If this were a bath oil, it would be a bath oil that made me think of the rose petal bath scene in "American Beauty", but without the pederasty. Not because I smell roses, that's just the atmosphere it evokes for me..

Edited February 25, 2015 by Psuke

[agirlnamedfury]

2014 Version:

 

Grape juice and cake! This is VERY sweet and wine-y while in the bottle and wet, but it softens up a bit as it dries.

[ringmaster-red]

This has become one of my favorites!

 

In the bottle: sweet grapes

 

Wet: Vanillic spiced grapes, not boozy, very light.

 

Dry: It's a morpher! It's gone from spiced cakes, to warm resin, to sweet musk, and then it all blends together as warm spiced resinous sweet musks.

 

I was honestly a little worried before I tried this one, because BPAL's boozy notes usually make me nauseous, but Haloa is so beautiful!!!

[milo]

Sweet, honeyed floral, maybe some beeswax thrown in. It starts off strong, but fades quickly and we're left with a washed out floral. I don't mind it, its kindb of subdued and pretty, but I don't need any more.

[splendidissima]

My bottle says 2007, so it's nicely aged!

 

This is fascinating, and not quite like anything else I've got! It's fruity in the way that good olive oil can be fruity, with some grapes and resins giving it a little more wine + warm spice. It's not boozy - these are grapes, not wine, unless it's a sweet herbal sort of wine, which - maybe that's it! As it dries I get a little more of the cakes, not overly sweet, but like an olive oil cake, kind of golden and balanced between sweet and, like, a sweeter type of...almost bread? (What I mean is, it's not like a super-dessert-y cake at all, but like something warm and golden made with honey and olive oil.) All the notes are blending together really nicely now. It reads as fairly androgynous to me - I like it on me, and I feel like I would love it on a partner of any gender! I'd want to keep inhaling their fascinating scent!

 

This is actually really lovely - I keep breathing it in for the experience! Very evocative of ancient Greece, perhaps in the midst of celebratory revels!