Thirteen (13): August 2021

[Seajewel]

Thirteen herbs to stave off the plague, coated with chocolate and delivered with a spoonful of sugar: butterburr, fennel, marigold, borage, rosemary, wood sorrel, clove pink, self-heal, yarrow, lemon balm, sweet cicely, rue, and masterwort.

[wendyb1063]

When I first put this on, it smells almost exactly like a Tootsie Roll:  chocolate, sugar, and something vaguely fruity (maybe it's the lemon balm coming through;  I tend to amp that note, or maybe it is the wood sorrel).  It's potent.  

 

After the initial candy rush, I start to get a bit of the clove pink.  It's a bit jarring at this stage: the floral, the fruit, the chocolate. 

 

But then it starts to settle into something beautiful and difficult to describe.  There is still some sweet chocolate, but it's mellowed and blended with the marigold and some of the other things, I think.   I don't really smell fennel, borage, rosemary, yarrow or rue, and I don't know what butterburr, self-heal, sweet cicely, or masterwort smell like.  It's not "green" or overtly "herbally", but a comforting, almost clean scent.  I'm not describing it very well, but it's really lovely.  And it lasts and lasts!  

 

I'll have to try it again in a few weeks.  I find the 13s tend to age really well.  

[doomsday_disco]

I am not familiar with most of the notes in this, and since my reviews tend to focus on picking out notes, this is going to be a very vague one.  

 

This 13 starts off with a burst of chocolate, sugar, and herbs. I definitely get some strong fennel during the wet phase, which had me worried for a while. Then it ends up settling into a predominantly green herbal scent swirled with chocolate and sugar -- as if you had a pot full of herbs, chocolate, and sugar, and stirred them together. But by the end of the day, the chocolate and sugar have managed to overtake the herbs, and it's almost a floofy, mallow-like sugary chocolate with some herbs thrown in on me?

 

I'm not sure how I feel about this one yet, although I really enjoyed the final morph of this scent. I will set it aside and allow it to age some before retesting.  

[Threemoons]

WOW.  SO glad I got this one.  Wish I had gotten a backup.  In the bottle:  Expensive chocolate truffle coated with raw cocoa powder.  Oddly enough in the bottle, I get a strong roasted unsweetened hazelnut scent also.  On, wet:  Am I the only person alive who still remembers those REALLY expensive/fancy chocolates that are bottle-shaped, filled with a liqueur that matches the fancy foil wraps?  Well, I do.  They were always a Very Special Treat at either Easter or Xmas for the grown-ups, and I got to pick one.  Fast forward a million years later; I have a friend who used to do huge house parties every New Year's Eve and he would have boxes and boxes of them all over his huge apartment, and I tried every single one with childish wonderful abandon.  This perfume, on wet, reminds me so much of the rare bottle chocolate filled with herby Chartreuse, or possibly Benedictine, or maybe a mouthful of both.  Chocolate as a candy and not cocoa comes out, along with a nice blast of gorgeous mixed Medieval medicinal herbs.  Drydown:  Dry sweet mix of herbs, with a floating layer of powdered sugar mixed with raw cocoa, which comes back to the party after a break.  So balanced and pretty; it lands exactly squarely between a gourmand and a sweet herbal blend.  I SO wish I had gotten a backup.  

[Little Bird]

This.. isn't my favorite Thirteen.  Actually, it might be my least favorite.  This feels like someone took good chocolate, herbal lavender, bone dry parsley and a little sour lemon and rosemary, and whipped it up with some sticky, overly sugary goo, and then poisoned the whole thing and crammed it into your mouth.  Sticky, poisonous herbs that someone tried to cover up with chocolate and sugar, and now it's stuck in your mouth with all of those dry herbs.  It had a mid stage that reminded me of bitter, green dandelion and dandelion sap as well.

Poisoned chocolate and lots of dried herbs.  A little sour.

[zankoku_zen]

Chocolate, rosemary, sugar, and a whiff of herbs. This one is an herby sort of chocolate, sugary, herby. Medium throw and wear length.