Harvest Moon 2020

[zankoku_zen]

This Harvest lunacy combines the autumnal scents of dry leaves, mulling spices, balsam fir, pine needles, cedar, juniper berry, clove, saffron, damson plum, white sage, yarrow, and lily twined with Dionysus’ sacred grapes and ivy, a bounty of apple, black fig, and pumpkin, and the amaranth and lingum aloes of Janus, all touched by a gentle breath of festival woodsmoke and sweet wine.

[Casablanca]

Harvest Moon comes out complex and lovely, dries down to more simplicity.

 

Freshly applied, this blend brings spiced and smoky apples with a smear of warm pumpkin. A little black fig (definitely the black sort of fig) and red wine are soft but present over a distant background of... woodsiness. Leafy tree stuff. This phase is nuanced and multilayered, like many of the Moons.

 

After drydown, I get mainly a sweet plum wine, with a touch of lingering smoke and Other-stuff-ness. Occasional sage whiffs, even. This later life of the blend is more simple and straightforward on my skin.

 

 

 

[hellionetic]

I'm not sure I have the language or experience yet to catch every note, but lets try.

 

fresh on my skin, I first smell the pumpkin and mulling spices very strongly. I do pick up a bit on the dry leaves and a nice, woody base. Actually, when i showed this to my mom we both agreed that it smells almost exactly like the Yankee Candle flagship store- specifically, the side of the building they dedicate to autumn scents, so hey, autumn accomplished!

 

Dried down a little bit it simplifies and sweetens a touch and smells absolutely delicious. The leaves and wood take a bit of a back seat (though still present) and the smell reminds me very much of baked apples, with a subtle amount of red wine, just the way I like to eat them. I love this scent and I'm so glad I decided on it as my first purchase from BPAL!

[avilion]

Fall wine and pumpkin and a hint of apple smoke and that glorious rich, satisfying note that I get from my imp of 10-year-old Snake Oil. (What IS that note??) This is everything I thought L'Autunno would be but wasn't. Interesting that Hellionetic clocked this as Yankee Candle, because Autunno smelled to me like "bathroom with two Yankee Candles burning, Live Laugh Love stencils on the walls, Mr. and Mrs. bathrobes"

 

I think I may need a full bottle of Harvest Moon along with my Weenies. RIP, my wallet.

[zankoku_zen]

Mulling spices, plum, fig, and pumpkin. This one is slightly foodier than the others. Good throw and wear length.

[puellacaerulea]

There are so many notes here that it's hard to differentiate them clearly. In the decant, it's more evergreen and wood notes with a hint of mulling spice. But as it wears, the mulling spices, pumpkin, wine, and fig take over. I definitely wouldn't call this Mainstream Fall Candle, though -- the spice is too subtle for that. It's like a sweet, lightly spiced mulled wine.

[feyofthefellwood]

This smells like a wonderful fall festival (it makes me nostalgic for the days when we could actually go places *cries*). All the notes are balanced very well, merging into a fruity, woodsy, smokey atmospheric scent. It's like drinking mulled wine and watching bonfires in the distance.

[avilion]

In celebration of my full bottle arriving, I did a 60 second review on TikTok.

[artisjok]

Harvest Moon 2020 is a rich woods & herb-infused wine scent to me. 

I was very drawn to the 2019 HM due to reviews (didn’t get the opportunity to try). When I realized 2020 had the same note list, I jumped to grab a second-hand bottle. 
 

The wine gives a delicious mouth-watering waft, and the lingum aloes (agarwood/oudh) are providing a supple woodsy bade. I can’t differentiate the different plants, but they really give this Moon with a witchy earthen vibe. I can imagine a village all sharing wine infused with herbs for prosperity, and celebrating all day and into the night. The mulling spices warm the brew and make the herbs more palatable.

 In the drydown, a tendril if smoke comes out and the wine is less potent. I don’t detect pumpkin or fruit apart from wine. 
 

I’m happy to have this bottle! It’s definitely perfect for Autumn, and I can see myself wearing it on cool night gatherings.
A sensual scent, speaking to pleasure in intimate moments, as well as joyous group celebration. Connection and gratitude. 

[Lucchesa]

I amp grape and wine notes, so sadly on me Harvest Moon 2020 smells like mulled Manischewitz and fruitcake, with some buttery pumpkin also apparent.  No dead leaves, no evergreens, herbs or woodsmoke.  I'm sure this decant will find a better home.

[doomsday_disco]

This one really overwhelmed me. I am also a wine amper, so I got lots of grape and plum-infused wine that was super strong on me to the point that I was starting to feel somewhat nauseated from smelling it and didn't want to smell any more new-to-me perfumes today. There are touches of fir and smoke that end up being more noticeable after several hours of wear, once the wine and fruit notes have finally stopped screaming for attention.

 

The good news is that I have a friend that loves all of these things, so I'll pass this on to her so that she can try it.

[Kanra]

This wouldn’t normally be one I would have bought a bottle of from notes alone. Cedar is somewhat of a death note, and fir and pine sometimes amp way too much on me overwhelming a blend, and this has a lot going on.

 

But: I heard some great things about this, and I do love wine fragrances, mulling spices, and pumpkin. So I took a chance on it.

 

I absolutely love this one. I remember going to the Autumn Fair in Central Park with some friends every year in middle school and early high school and this brings back those memories so strongly. It smells like walking around an autumn festival, taking in the smell of the leaves that surround you, intertwined with aromas from all the nearby booths: mulled wine, foody goods from local farmer’s markets, tons of pumpkins. I'm a big fan of mulled wine in fragrances (and wine in general) and most of my mulled wine fragrances are more along the lines of a winter atmosphere, but this perfectly satisfies the craving for an autumnal mulled wine, when the air starts to become brisk and it just turns cold enough to start drinking it.

 

I can see the comparisons to “fall candles”, but it’s a lot more complex with a lot more going on than a mainstream fall candle. It has those notes, sure, but a lot more complexity. A high quality, luxury-indie fall atmospheric candle maybe? Which is never a bad thing in my book.

 

There’s a lot going on, but in a great way. This is one of my favorite Lunacy releases that I’ve tried.

Edited January 29, 2021 by Kanra

[fairybites]

Prior to reviewing this, the only other Harvest Moon I have tested was the 2017 version. If you look at the notes, it doesn't seem like there's a huge difference between the two. '17 has sunflowers and '20 adds grapes pretty much. But they smell so different compared side to side!

 

In '20, the grapes and wine are the strongest notes, I can barely pick out the others. And If this was the first Harvest Moon I tested, I probably wouldn't be able to recognize the similarities between the two. However with the '17 version, and this could be due to aging, but the notes are a lot more clearer. I get the pumpkin, apple, and smoke the most. Maybe with time, 2020's Harvest Moon's wine will have softened considerably and I'll be able to pick out the notes more accurately. Who knows, I could just be amping the wine extra hard and that's why I can't pick out much else.

 

The label for this is really cute, and since the two HMs are fairly different from one another, I would probably upgrade this to a bottle in the future if that wine note calms down.