Cloon Keen La Bealtaine Review (Meabh McCurtin) + May Day Draw

May 1, 2019May 1, 2019

Celebrate the return of the sun © Anders Jilden

We feel it in every cell of our being. The days are lengthening and the sun is strengthening. We are past the time of willing the first buds of spring to open. Winter is safely behind us as we’re half way between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice. It is the time for a festival, time for La Bealtaine. The Irish May Day festival, La Bealtaine (pronounced roughly as lah-BELL-ten-neh), inspired Margaret Mangan of Cloon Keen to create a fragrance that captured the vitality and beauty promised by the return of the sun. It is right that she enlisted the Irish-born/Paris-based perfumer Meabh McCurtin of IFF to bottle this idea. Their last collaboration, Cloon Keen Roisin Dubh, has garnered much praise and is a finalist for the UK Fragrance Foundation’s Best New Independent Fragrance of 2018. Ms. McCurtin dove back to her childhood memories of May Day in County Clare and plucked out an ultra-feminine beauty of a perfume. I was enchanted the first time I wore it and was surrounded by a sunny, floral bubble of happiness. The experience has been repeated every time I’ve worn Cloon Keen La Bealtaine since.

La Bealtaine Fire Festive high on the Hill of Uisneach in Co. Weastmeath ©Irish Central

From ancient days the festival of light and fertility has marked the beginning of summer when the crops resume growing and the cows return to grazing their summer pastures. In the beginning it was the druids rubbed sticks together to ignite bonfires on hilltops the night before the festival. The animals and people passed between two bonfires to receive the protective power of the flames. After this ritual youths from the community were sent out to meadow and wood to gather flowers to decorate their hair, homes, and animals. The first morning dew of La Bealtaine was especially precious and imbued with magic. As the sun rose the girls rolled in the meadow grass or washed their faces with the dew to enhance the beauty of their youth. It’s interesting to note that “Cloon Keen” is the Anglicized form of the Irish phrase meaning “splendid meadow” and is the name of Ms. Mangan’s parents house where she and her husband Julian Checkley started the business.

May is a time of celebration throughout the Catholic world ©St. Louis Review

As with many things in Ireland the May Day festival of La Bealtaine has long been a blend of Catholic and pre-Christian traditions. The crowning of a local maiden as the May Queen has been replaced with The Crowning of Virgin Mary as the Queen of May. The perfumer Ms. McCurtin grew up in County Clare and remembers that as school children she and her friends went out to gather flowers from the meadows to make altars to The Virgin. Ms. Mangan’s mother has the same memories from her childhood. Those multi-generational memories were the starting point for the creation of Cloon Keen La Bealtaine.

Yellow flowers were used in La Bealtaine celebrations to represent the sun. Buttercups in Co. Wicklow ©Paddy O’Sullivan

The beauty of Cloon Keen La Bealtaine is its floralcy. The well blended notes of neroli, jasmine, rose and tuberose are feminine and enveloping. At first spray there is a solar flare of bergamot and mandarine, but it is overtaken by the wave of flowers. A slight hint of sharpness keeps the fragrance dancing. The feeling overall is one of innocence and youth. It is floral that hasn’t grown up yet into wearing oriental trappings or accessorizing with fruity notes. It is what it is; the “no makeup” look in a perfume. The smooth, earthy base gives the floral its nobility; it is not coy but rather strong in ability to smile at you, looking you in straight in the eye. This confidence speaks to the quality of the ingredients.

Orange Flowers in the hands of harvester in Tunisia, photo courtesy IFF

Many of the elements that perfumer Ms. McCurtain gathered into Cloon Keen La Bealtaine are from IFF’s Laboratoire Monique Remy, a division of the fragrance giant that is dedicated to natural, ethically sourced ingredients of the highest caliber. Purity and respect for the earth are essential to any fragrance dedicated to a pastoral fertility festival. As I researched these ingredients from LMR I was struck with the harmony between the spirit of Lá Bealtaine and the stories of the ingredients. The jasmine absolute is from Egypt is handpicked before dawn and placed in open-work wooden crates for its trip to the distillery. How reminiscent of the gathering of flowers on Bealtaine Eve! The neroli oil is produced in Tunisia from handpicked orange flower blossoms. The damascene rose is harvested from just 75 families in Isparta, Turkey. Again, the La Bealtaine festival is mirrored in the feeling of community among the local growers and distillers.

Irish sheep celebrating the return of the sun ©Peter Pruzina

How ever you celebrate May Day I hope it is with the optimism, beauty, hope and joy of La Bealtaine, both festival and perfume.

Notes: Bergamot, Mandarin, Neroli, Pink Pepper, Angelica, Jasmine, Rose, Tuberose, Virginia Cedarwood, Patchouli, Amber, Musk, Cashmeran

Sample kindly provided by Cloon Keen. My opinions are my own.

– Marianne Butler, Senior Contributor

100 ml bottle of La Bealtaine edp, photo courtesy Cloon Keen Atelier

Thanks to the generosity of Margaret Mangan of Cloon Keen Atelier we have one 100 ml bottle of Cloon Keen La Bealtaine for one registered reader in North America or the EU. The draw is for registered readers only, so be sure to register if you have not done so. To be eligible please let us know what you enjoyed about Marianne’s review and where you live. Happy May Day! Draw closes May 4, 2019

We announce the winners only on site and on our Facebook page, so Like ÇaFleureBon and use our Blog feed…or your dream prize will be just spilled perfume.