Under the Foot Warmer

[zankoku_zen]

Smoldering pine wood, black pepper, ho wood, amber embers, leather, green tea, and silken red musk.

[DiesMali]

In the bottle: Spicy but also smooth red musk!

 

Wet on my skin: Effervescent, smoothly-spicy red musk with hints of wood. 

 

Dry: This is the first thing I am testing out of the mailbox, and it's already absolutely beautiful! This is a gentle, slightly sweet and very smooth red musk with maybe something slightly floral, like jasmine green tea rather than plain green tea, and the addition of the fire/ashy pine wood, amber embers, and black pepper gives it an effervescent spice that tingles in the nose a little bit. Not really getting any leather, but I think that is contributing to the 'silken' red musk in making this feel so smooth despite the spices. Red musk usually behaves on me, but I feel like maybe this is a red musk blend that others who it doesn't behave on could potentially wear! It's very much a sum of the parts blend, and everything together just smells SO nice. Piney, spicy, silky-smooth red musk and a hint of amber. Nice. NICE. 

[starbrow]

My nose is so confused. There's just a lot going on here. At the moment, I get a lot of the smoky embers, without it being any sort of bbq char (thank goodness) and a dash of pepper that I would swear was pink, but of course we know from the listed notes it's black pepper. Could the red musk + pepper combo be playing tricks on my nose? 

 

I honestly keep sniffing this and being unsure what I'm smelling. I get the wood and smoke, a hint of leather, a spice of green tea, and basically no red musk. The blend of it all is kind of going straight to my sinuses, and I don't know if that's the smoke or what exactly, but I kind of like it and I kind of find it repellent.

 

I wish this review could be more helpful. I think this blend needs time to chill. I will hold onto my decant and not upgrade to a bottle. This is not a red musk bomb, for those who fear that note! This is also a very strange little bird and I'm not sure which way it will turn, for better or for worse. It's spicy, mysterious, weird, very interesting. I think it's the kind of scent that needs to be experienced in order to know how all these notes come together. It's a bit of a Mona Lisa for me because I have definitely not figured it out yet, whatsoever!

[Casablanca]

Mm. Smoky, smoldering wood and green tea? Sipping green tea beside a woodfire just gone out in a bit of dampness? So far so good -- although I'm also getting whiffs of pepper, which feels a bit odd with the other notes appearing so far.

 

As a smoke ho, I'm absolutely delighting in this smoldering wood.

My inner green tea lover is reveling in the clean, sweet, and slightly floral serenity of that note here.

My red musk-hating skin is thrilled that I'm not noticing that note.

 

OTOH, there is a lot more going on in this than I am teasing out and recognizing, and the red musk is a likely culprit in that mix. I thought this would bomb on me, because of the musk, but it's not. Instead, it's intriguing.

 

Well, there it is. Eventually, drydown takes this into a heavy, albeit odd, red musk sweetness.

 

This is a shifter. I would love to see this smoldering wood again with other companion notes.

[supreme_c0rt]

Holy hell this is SO much better than I was ever expecting, and I was expecting a lot. The notes are full of win for me, but this exceeded all preconception.

FIRST: Smoldering is a good word for what's happening here, but I think "toasted" might be better. It's a delicious, warm, toasted-cedar woodiness. A steamy, baked, luxurious warm wood smell EXACTLY like the smell of being in a sauna, minus the stranger sweat. It's just you in the sauna. The sauna is fresh and ready. I don't get any pine, this to me is very cedar. I guess that's the ho wood? It's like cedar but a buttery creamy version. I want to bathe in it. Ho wood, where you been all my life?

 

THEN: a creamy, silky-smooth middle base like a glowing vanilla amber. An immediate hit of peppercorn, warm and spicy, just the right amount. The leather is so warm, smooth, lived-in, not harsh at all. Brown leather, like butter-soft riding gloves. The green tea is doing this thing where it’s herbal but not; it’s adding this AHMAZING green note that combines with the smoothest red musk I’ve ever smelled. Like green tea gently toasted. The red musk feels distilled and clear like it did in Awake, not shouty or aggressive. The combination is like… Extraordinarily expensive leather-cedar body butter applied by an attractive masseuse inside a steaming high-end luxury sauna with a hot mug of genmaicha waiting on the floor mat. You're doing Serious Self Care. You deserve this.

 

It’s SO LUXE y’all. Heart eyes, for real. Upgrade is without question. If you have any love at all for woody blends, treat yo'self. 

[Laughing Seagull]

I tested this right out of the mailbox after @ supreme_c0rt raved about it.

 

In my opinion, this is the most wearable Luper I've tried this year (I still have a few more to try though) and deserves to be a sleeper hit.  I wasn't sure about this one because I usually do fruity florals, woods are hit-or-miss, ambers are hit-or-miss, red musk is hit-or-miss, and pepper can turn into barbecue real quick, but I love leather so I decided to gamble on it.  A gamble worth taking.

 

My initial impression is "soft woods" with red musk.  I specify "soft woods" because this is smooth and unobtrusive rather than a cedar bonk on the head. The drydown brings sweet and toasty aspects out.  Genmaicha is a good comparison; I can imagine toasty rice pieces being involved in this.  If I shove my nose right up into it, I get a VERY subtle leather and something reminds me of cola or root beer in the back of my nose.  Like someone spilled cola on a suede jacket and wiped it off, but there's a little of the scent still hanging around

 

After about an hour my impression is "like Tombstone, but nicer."

[zankoku_zen]

Pine, green tea, and a whiff of leather and musk. This one is a green musky blend with enough sweetness and leather to keep it interesting. Medium throw and wear length.

[Ezra]

Under the Foot Warmer starts off as this lovely smoky peppery leathery haze, and gets sweeter and more blended as the hours go by. 4 hours after application, it's mostly green tea and amber and this bright woody scent that I'm assuming is the ho wood (sort of balsam-adjacent but less dry?). The green tea is closer to genmaicha than straight green tea, with sort of a toasted rice roundness to it. 

Overall: Starts out musky with worn leather and smoke, then morphs into a wearable sweet toasted delight. I'll definitely be upgrading to a full bottle; this one is my favorite Luper of the year!

 

Throw: medium

Longevity: High, but it's a morpher!

[Jenjin]

Starts off with a sweet, woody blast and quickly smooths down to the perfect spa scent. It transports me immediately to Ten Thousand Waves in New Mexico, plush robe on with cushy slippers and creaking wood planks all around. Waters trickling and steam rising. I can only imagine what a wooded spa would be like in Japan, but it would smell like this. Warm golden wood, heated amber, shaggy leathers and a burning fire. The green tea floats just above the surface. This is BEAUTIFUL and soothes my retched haunted soul.  One of the top Luper standouts for me and an immediate bottle upgrade.

Edited May 26, 2021 by Jenjin

[Threemoons]

Another "was on my possible cut list but glad I got it" scent.  I have a TON of red musk already but this is a really nice, light, and very sophisticated iteration.  In the bottle:  Some kind of sweet red amber and almost a floral tea note.  On, wet:  The two wood notes really pick up, and I am getting more of a green pine wood than smoldering pine wood INITIALLY but then after about 5 minutes, BOOM the gentle smolder starts, as does a teeny bit of leather.  Longer drydown:  The red musk is light and smooth, but rather floral.  Mom says she picked up a bit of a sweet tobacco note blending up in there later in the day also.

[feyofthefellwood]

I am unexpectedly in love with this one. Reading the notes, I wasn't sure what it would smell like, but the favorable reviews made me blind bottle. I don't regret it. Cool green tea and the silkiest red musk complement the smoldering woods so well. The smokiness is sheer and ethereal (it reminds me a bit of the smoke in the Fir Needles & Smoke duet, which I also adore). If you like smoky woods type scents, I'd definitely give this one a try. I will need a backup bottle. 

[rivetted]

warm, resiny, & foresty. definitely in my favorite categories of smells, so i knew this would be a winner.

 

i love how sophisticated this one is, the green tea & smoldering pine really come through. 

[Llanval]

This was the bottle I was most excited for, and I'm so glad I love it, its unique and beautifully atmospheric. 

 

In the bottle: sweet wood and swirling mysteries. It's lovely in the bottle, with just the hint of red berries. This is a winter vibe for me.

 

Wet on the skin, the scent just takes off with a rolling cloud of sweet red musk and smouldering pine wood, very like a sauna without the tang of salt or that hot, watery note that amplifies all scents in a sauna. Honestly, this is a damn good approximation though. The amber smoulders too. The pine wood smoke is so fab, it has a genuine sweetness that so clearly recalls lightly charred pinewood I wish this note was a bit louder on me.

 

As this dries, the sweet smoky wood become a little stronger, and a cream-like smoothness slips over the wood, without reading saccharine or cloying. I love how much this blend becomes again, a hefty atmospheric for me: this is the sister of Gokugetsu, which for me was a wood panelled room looking out onto a garden. Under The Foot Warmer is in the same elegant wood panelled home in 16th c. Tokyo, but this is an enclosed room in the heart and hearth of this home. There's a little foot warmer in front of you, and the scent of winter and spices rings around the gentle drifting scents of smouldering embers and heated wood, two cups of freshly prepared matcha steaming nearby.

 

Love this one, might be my favourite of the 2021 Shunga I blind bottled. ❤❤❤

 

Now if only I could find a bpal that truly captures the muggy, heady glory of a greenhouse in bloom, I'd be quite content, lol.

[Seajewel]

There is so much going on here, but I love it. It’s a spicy smoky wood scent woven through with a very smooth red musk. 

[HerbGirl]

Beautiful. It just arrived so I know it needs a moment but I can't pick out any of the notes, lol. It does remind me of my old favorite Ojon shampoo. Very nice.

 

Eta: This is aging beautifully. It is rare for me to want to wear the same perfume oil two days in a row. The nuttiness went away, the amber is smoldering with the pine and I love it.

Edited November 28, 2021 by HerbGirl

[Ennikar]

I've had this bottle for years now but still have difficulty describing it. "Silken" seems right, though; there's very little sharp here and all of the notes blend together. There's red musk, but I wouldn't necessarily identify it as a "red musk blend" - I get the pine first, a little smokey, but it doesn't register as a "smoke" note. Leather is iffy on me, but here it's like an additional dimension to the scent rather than a note on its own. The green tea is here as well, and the "smoldering" thing makes it register as like... a smoked tea? Black pepper is MIA (but I like pepper, so maybe it's just not as strong as I'd like, and the overall impression of the scent is consistent with pepper). Fits in the woods + red musk section, near Fenris Wolf, but with pine-y and smokey dimensions and a touch of sophistication from the tea.