Water Tiger

[Seajewel]

A new year’s blessing! Peony, China’s national flower, with bamboo for flexibility, plum blossom for perseverance, courage, and hope, tangerine for wealth, orange for happiness, lychee for household peace, pine resin for constancy, golden kumquat for prosperity, King mandarin for good fortune, cypress for longevity, sticky rice cakes for abundance and hopes for a rich, sweet life, and a splash of blazing red of dragon’s blood to help you scare away the rampaging Nian.

[brwnpaperhag]

I just got this yesterday, but I was too excited to wait and longer than a night to test it for the day.

 

A very nice floral...I think I'm getting a lot of plum blossom, and the orange/tangerine/king mandarin comes out at the very start, keeping it bright and juicy. As it dries, it settles into something more aquatic, but I have no idea where that is coming from, and I don't have any other lunar blands to compare. 

A couple hours in, the pine resin and cypress have come to play, rounding out the floral vibe and keeping it interesting with their depth. It feels very springlike and feminine, but I can see anyone liking it for its clean feel. 

I hope as it ages I'll be able to get more of the rice cake. In general I'm happy I have a bottle of this, and the label is so pretty! Happy Year of the Tiger!

[LavenderCoffee]

Water Tiger is a lively, complex floral scent.

There's an effervescent burst of bright citrus and peony up front, and as it dries, dragon's blood and pine resin begin roiling up beneath it - not unlike powerful muscles moving under vivid orange fur! I'm not finding the sticky rice, and there is definitely something lightly aquatic to this scent, maybe from plum blossom/kumquat/cypress? 
On my skin, the scent has low throw, moderate wear time, and the last note standing is peony.

Edited March 22, 2022 by LavenderCoffee

[Little Bird]

The tangerine in Water Tiger is so realistic, like peeling ripe tangerines and getting the zesty juice on your fingers, and the plum blossom and lychee smell so good together.  Lychee is almost like fresh, juicy grapes, but with a sweet, tropical, perfumey quality, and the plum blossom's tart fruitiness and creamy blossoms smell so good mixed with the tangerine and lychee.  It stays fruity and bright for about an hour and then the dragon's blood incense comes in and gives a dry, smoky incense veil over everything.  For a while, it was like a tropical wine and incense, and then it dries down to mostly a hazy, softly smoky temple incense with hints of citrus zest.  This is one of my favorite New Year's blends.

[Casablanca]

Brilliant tangerine, orange, mandarin, kumquat and lychee open this New Year with a citrusy bang.

 

Before long, peony and plum drift in, seating the blend comfortably in fruity floral territory. Eventually, I get a little pale green bamboo... but mostly, this is where the blend stays on me over time.

[HerbGirl]

I have been wearing this quite often since it was offered, and today the orange, lychee, kumquat and cypress are most prominent, which I love. It's such a bright perfume to help cut through the fog of this years' doom and gloom. One of my favorites...morphs often!

 

An hour later I smell the pine and peony and this particular wear is truly lovely.

Edited November 1, 2022 by HerbGirl

[zankoku_zen]

Citrusy asian plum and fruity florals. Medium throw and wear length. 

[ShadowEtienne]

I love the Lunar New Year scents and have most of them in at least a small amount at this point. Water Tiger (2022) shares some really prominent notes with Water Rabbit (2023) and Fire Cock (2017), especially in that they all three have the "sticky rice cakes" note. Like most LNY blends, the overarching scent profile is citrus and the enamel candied and dried fruit trays that get put out for LNY, backed with some beautiful drifting floral and resin notes.

 

So far, I'd say that Water Tiger is one of the most resinous and herbal smelling blends, which is not something that I would have necessarily expected. It really reminds me of the scent of freshly brewed sticky-rice pu'erh leaves! (The sticky rice scent in sticky rice pu'erh is achieved with an herb that has a scent and flavor very similar to sticky rice, and they've got that spot on here.)

 

Citrus is a prominent player here, but the sweetness is less prominent than in several of the other LNY blends. It's an interesting addition to the collection of LNY scents, and I really like that I have a somewhat less sweet one that still has these lovely notes!