summer incense perfumes: Olivier Durbano Amethyst, Anatole Lebreton Grimoire and Milano Fragranze Basilica collage by Emmanuelle, brand bottles and pixaby background
What, incense for summer?! I hear some of you gasp. Isn’t the humidity and heat meant for lighter, citrusy, beachy scents? What will have to look forward to in winter if our cold weather favourites make a premature entrance? What’s next — wearing white after Labor Day? Dogs and cats living together? Mass hysteria?
Courage, mes amis. Here are three lovely summer incense perfumes that are absolutely delicious in the sort of weather that makes you long for a pool and a coconut umbrella cocktail.
Olivier Durbano Amethyst by Olivier Durbano
Olivier Durbano Amethyst (Olivier Durbano) 2006: First up is Amethyst, Olivier Durbano’s rococo bouquet of grapes, raspberry, jasmine, orris, and incense. This is watercolour summer incense—diffuse, soft, soothing and entirely lovely. There is no smokiness to the incense here, which is airy and ethereal rather than church-like. Amethyst opens with the sugar-wine juiciness of crushed red grape and contrasting bitter sparkle of bergamot. Indistinct floral and fruit notes flutter like drowsy butterflies as they gradually become recognizable. Then, a fleeting bite of pepper cuts the sweetness as woody incense – a Durbano trademark – gives the fruit and flowers a spicy twang. In the perfume’s later stages, the grapey-floral opening recedes gracefully, Despite the fruit and flowers and the usually dense notes of palisander and amber, Amethyst retains a fluffy lightness. If you ever thought incense was not for warm weather, Amethyst is the summer incense perfume for you. Notes: Bergamot, pepper, grape, raspberry, incense, palisander wood, jasmine, orris, vegetable amber, sandalwood, musk, vanilla.
Anatole Lebreton Grimoire photo Anatole Le Breton
Anatole Lebreton Grimoire (Anatole Lebreton) 2017: Anatole Lebreton’s splendid Grimoire is an herbal, animalic incense fragrance imbued with the skewed, chimerical beauty of an Odilon Redon painting. Vivid, biting bergamot cuts through the seep of smoky incense in Grimoire’s opening moments. This summer incense is not remotely churchlike but damp and mossy like olfactory verdigris. Its opening feels like a slowly moving kaleidoscope in which green notes blend into and then separate from incense, smoke and woods. With its puff of sweet, fumy elemi and olibanum and the bittersweet bite of dried herbs, Grimoire’s first moments smell like a hookah smoking in a medicinal garden. I half expect to look up and find the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland asking me who I am.
As the bergamot loses its sharp edges, dried lavender and basil tumble forward, and Grimoire becomes less citric, more herbal. A fresh smelling cedar comes through followed closely by a horsey tang of cumin. I absolutely adore this fragrance and recommend it for, frankly, any weather. Let Grimoire’s strangely beautiful lavender and incense fragrances cast its spell over you at midnight on a summer night when the air is thick and moon hides behind the stars. Notes: Bergamot, basil, lavender, elemi, frankincense, Seville lavender, Atlas cedarwood, cumin, patchouli, moss, musk.
Basilica di Sant’ Ambrogio Milan by Ermano Picco© and Milano Fragranze Basilica photo courtesy of the brand
Milano Fragranze Basilica (Violaine Collas) 2021: Masque Milano impresario Alessandro Brun’s new line of Milan-themed fragrances offered up some last year’s loveliest surprises. Little wonder that Basilica, his incense ode to the city’s ancient Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio, created a stir in the fragrance community and was one of Deputy and Natural Editor Editor Ida Meister’s best of 2021 and a finalist for Art and Olfaction Awards 2022. Despite its ecclesiastical moniker, Basilica is not your typical censer-swinging smoke bomb. Its spare, herbal beauty evokes Brother Cadfael tending his gardens rather than a cathedral mass. It opens with aromatics, damp cedarwood and light incense, like the smell of an old monastery chapel when you wander in from the heat of midday. Soon, the old, familiar smell warmed milk trickles in alongside labdanum, in a caramel-like accord less the sweetness. Dots of thyme and rosemary punctuate and lift the fragrance, giving it a wonderfully green cast at times. Basilica is the one to reach for when you need sanctuary in the midst of a hot, teeming city. Notes: thyme, rosemary, warm milk accord labdanum hyperessence, incense resinoid, cypriol, Virginia cedarwood, Santamanol TM.
Perfume and incense brings joy to the heart. Proverbs 27.9
Disclaimer: samples of all the above perfumes graciously sent to me by the brands. My opinions, however, are always my own.
Lauryn Beer, Senior Editor
Still not convinced? We have a summer incense draw below to try two of these lovelies. And do support our perfumers by buying samples and bottles from them or at a retailer online.
USA and EU 100 ml of Olivier Durbano Amethyst for one registered reader
USA and EU 100 ml of Milano Fragranze Basilica for one registered reader
To be eligible, please leave a comment with what you thought of Lauryn’s reviews of the three summer incense perfumes you should be wearing, what fragrance prize you wish to win and where you live. Have you tried Olivier Durbano, Milano Fragranze or Anatole Lebreton perfumes? Draw closes 8/24/2022.
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Read Lauryn’s 3 incense perfumes you should be wearing in winter here
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