Screen shot Rook Perfumes Forest via official Instagram
On early summer mornings, when a drowsy sun greets a passing cloud or two before turning to the serious business of burning off the chill, the forest is stirring awake. Along a woodland trail carpeted with pine needles, birds gossip, and red salamanders play hide-and-seek. 6-year-old me turns over the crumbling underside of a log to watch a community of mites and beetles scuttle, furious at being roused. Ferns hang heavy with dew while a daddy longlegs goes about its elegant business. I smell the watery bracken of a lake through the trees and my heart quickens. As I look up in a clearing, the sky is an all-seeing blue. I don’t know it yet, but the brisk zest of conifer and cedar, the mulchy damp of forest floor and the warm aroma of sap I breathe in without a thought will together become markers of time, scent memories of that world without horizon that exists only in childhood.
Girl Walking in Forest, image via pexels©
Forest paints an olfactory portrait of those long-gone Pennsylvania woods with such arresting accuracy that it nearly brought me to tears. The first spray brings a whoosh rattle of pine trees shaking in the wind – that unmistakably cold, sharp whiff of needles and the nutty, cardboard smell of pinecone. Pine is a particularly difficult note to get right in perfumery; it often reminds me of floor cleaner. But Rook Perfumes founder and nose Dr. Nadeem Crowe has managed to get it just right: aromatic, turpenic and slightly minty. He flanks the pine quickly with black pepper and cypress, which help create a 3-D pine forest aroma much like the one I remember from girlhood. The pepper heightens the pine note, and along with the warmer, more citric cypress, steers the fragrance away from Pine-Sol territory.
Lake image via pexels©
As I sit with the fragrance, a mineral aspect comes forward, and I remember the wet stone smell of the lakeshore. This recollection is reinforced by patchouli coming through, and there is a redolence of dead leaves that stir in the deep water when I scooped them up with my kayak paddle. Cedar, all dark sawdust and camphor, moves past the conifer notes for a while, dominating the perfume’s heart and bringing us deep into the woods.
It’s cold out today. As I walk with my dog down the street, I retest Forest in the rawness of January. To my surprise, Forest has turned into a woody incense perfume thick with elemi (a note I gravitate to), with its lemony herbal perfume. There’s no frankincense in here that I know of, yet the fragrance smells at his juncture as if it does, an illusion created perhaps by the elemi and patchouli combining with the cedar. Whatever it is, the effect is absolutely lovely, and it gives the fragrance an unexpectedly sophisticated dimension.
Hudson River by Winslow Homer©
Gradually, Rook Perfumes Forest goes its own way, turning flintier, the coniferous aspects becoming a little more distant, as if one were walking out of the woods, away from the lake towards home. As it dries down, Forest smells equally of cedar and pine, garlanded by greenery and the pungent tang of pepper. It wears beautifully in the cold and just as well before a wood fire with a cup of tea. As I look out the window, watching for the promised snow flurries to begin their soft agitation, I raise my wrist unthinkingly and breathe in the perfume again. It smells less like the woods by the lake now – the cedar and incense-y elements have travelled elsewhere – but, as I wait, it smells like a beginning.
Notes: French cypress, pine needle, black pepper, elemi Iran, green notes, Indonesian patchouli, Virginian cedar and white musk.
Disclaimer: Sample of Rook Perfumes Forest kindly provided by Rook Perfumes. My opinions are entirely subjective and my own.
Lauryn Beer, Senior Editor
Rook Perfumes Forest, image via the brand
Thanks to the generosity of Rook Perfumes, we have a 50 ml bottle of Forest for one registered reader in in the US, UK, EU (excluding Romania, Russia, Spain, Greece and Turkey). You must register or your entry will not count. To be eligible, please leave a comment saying what strikes you about Rook Perfumes Forest based on Lauryn’s review and where you live. Draw closes 1/24/2023.
Read Senior Editor Nicoleta Tomsa’s reviews of Rook Perfumes Scent of the Metaverse and Undergrowth.
Enjoy Senior Editor Karl Topham’s review of RSX/3 School
Scent of The Metaverse Verse 1 was co-recipient of Best Experimental Scent 2022
Forest is also available in the USA at Luckyscent
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