Mabon 2010

[WidgetAlley]

Blackberry wine and apple with hops, English ivy, rosemary, hazel, sage, chamomile, sweetgrass, oak bark, wild nuts, and myrrh.

 

Bottle: A mouth-water melange of fruit, grass, and wood notes. I smell fresh blackberries and the tang of blackberry liqueur, sun-warmed yellow apples, hot dry grass on a summer's day, a bitter tang of hops, something gently nutty, and a lot of just-dried herbs in a warm window, with a touch of incense. This one is the perfect invocation of my favorite time of year: late summer just verging on fall.

Wet: Wine is not normally a well-behaved note on me, but here it's rich and round with blackberries and it smells incredible. That's the first thing to come up, with hot grass and drying apples just underneath it, then a mysterious myriad of kitchen herbs, a touch of sugared nuts, and rich, orderly (for once!) myrrh. I am just in love with this. It's fruity without being girly, herbal without being bitter, warm without being spicy. It's also very much not a perfume-smell, it's a me-smell instead, with the perfect amount of close-but-present throw. It smells like I've been hiking in a bountiful landscape all day.

Dry: Eventually the fruit dies back a little leaving a mostly herbs-nut-trees-with-side-of-fruit scent steeped in sweet wine and myrrh. I almost didn't swap for this one, but I'm so glad I did! A surprise contender for serious love that will absolutely go into heavy rotation: in winter, to remind me of summer's golden days, and in summer to celebrate them! I can't believe this one doesn't get more love.

[Alia Kaitan]

I was seduced by the description of this, and oooh it is so worth it.

 

In the bottle, this is sharp herbs with a hint of wine. Huh.

 

On wet, boozey grass! Boozey herbs! Boozey berries! Boozey apples! So much booze. After a few minutes, the wine-shock is giving way to this incredible, full bodied blackberry-nutty-sweet hay blend doused with a red wine. The smell of dry apples, too, definitely riding in there somewhere, as I keep catching whiffs of it. This is a harvest-bounty indeed. I have the image of an old oak table in a sunlit kitchen overflowing with ripe berries, raw nuts, baskets of dry flowers and fresh herbs, great goblets of wine and applesauce simmering on the stove.

 

Dry, the wine and fresh berry juice is not so dense but still very present. The nuts and chamomile are a little stronger. There is *almost* a cinnamon in there; not sure exactly what that is. Overall, though, this did not change a whole lot on drydown for me. It's got great throw, though, and seems to be going strong, so I am hoping it will last.

 

I love how this has delectable food-notes, but the wine transforms it from something you want on a plate into a deeply sensual mature woman scent. This evokes a woman in the prime of her life: this lady knows how to get things done, and also how to indulge in sensory delight. She's a sultry, confident and complex creature. Mess with her at your own peril.

 

Emoticon rating: :love!:

[TrailerTrashPrincess]

since this bottle is now going to a better home, i thought i should post a quickie review first...

kinda mead-ish (in a good way), but more apple and less honey. don't really get any blackberry, which is a good thing 'cuz i don't like them. i think the chamomile and nuts are what gives a cereal-y, kinda creamy backdrop in there somewhere. overall, a very Harvest kind of scent, comforting and familiar and yet not. but since i've never done more than sniff it, it's time for a better home.

[kolibri]

5 ml bottle. My first BPAL purchase, Sept 2010.

 

 

In the bottle: APPLE!! (Oh, and maybe some berries and other stuff, too.)

 

Wet: Spiced cider, sage, ivy. A flash of wild, crisp autumn wind that carries the woodsmoke from a nearby cottage. Damp leaves and fresh rain.

 

Dry: I'm wreathed in sweetness. Baked apple pie, blackberry cobbler and vanilla ice cream, and hot herbal tea. Body heat makes the scent rise quickly into sharp cut apples and the memory of fresh blackberries, but it settles back into a warm embrace of late-year seasonal comforts while the dry leaves are whipping by in a fall frenzy outside.

 

 

 

Overall: Maybe it's because this is my first BPAL love, but I adore this scent. I usually only wear it during the autumn and early winter, so it will probably last me a while.

[tinyvulture]

I've wanted to try Mabon for ages! Here goes. Freshly-pressed, sweet apple juice, blended with tart, dark berries. Reminds me of Punkie Night at this stage. In a few minutes, I notice the other notes lingering in the background. The myrrh, rosemary and sweetgrass aren't popping up, but the hops, herbs, and nuts lend a wild, natural vibe. It really does call to mind some sort of outdoor celebration of the autumn equinox. My only negative is that it's not very strong, perhaps due to the age of my decant, but I'd still purchase a bottle if I came across one.

[bulletslc]

On me this is berry wine, ivy and camomile with

Something dry and dusty (sage and myrrh? )in the

background. Very much a fall scent. I neither love nor hate

it. But it works for they day it was made for.

[freyasfae]

At first, this is all blackberry wine on me - to the point it almost smells more like hard candies than blackberry, but it doesn't take long to settle and for more of the other notes to come out - though I can't really discern between the other notes, as it smells like blackberry wine with some herby, woods, nut stuff going on - and a whiff of myrrh (which I can handle in small doses like this!). It has that element of many of the beautiful autumnal scents that the lab makes, but with a blackberry forwardness.

[Bamels]

I bought this to wear when celebrating Mabon, so I am not hugely bothered about the smell (unless it's horrendous). If it's great, fab, I'll wear it more often. If it's meh, eh, at least it's only once a year. Bottle smells slightly syrupy but with a sweet medicinal tang (hops?). When on, the tang dies down nicely and is leaving me with herbal syrup. It's a lovely scent and the perfect balance of power between Lammas and Samhain!

[DiZZysTARdust]

Picked this up randomly this morning and for whatever reason it seemed like a good day for a harvest feast. In the bottle this is boozy blackberries. Freshly on the blackberry stays strongly present, but everything else is somehow present underneath. There's a bit of a warm herbally nuttiness to this that enhances the berries while remaining a well blended base.

 

However, i cannot shake my association of this scent with a candle. It smells like a blackberry candle. On me maybe. Like a really nice candle, but all the same there is something in here that is almost- waxy? Not in a beeswax type way really, just in a candle way. I feel like an autumn harvest berry themed candle. I do love it, but this was totally out of season for this scent.

 

This dried much the same as wet and it has some serious throw. It also lingers. 5 plus hours after applying it before my shift i could still smell traces of it on my elbows and other test patches. Def excited to be wearing this in the upcoming fall season