DSH Perfumes Green Rhubarb and Cane Sugar collage using Unsplash and DSH Perfumes image
Rhubarb Pie
Rhubarb Pie
It might rain tomorrow
Better get some before I die
Save your lemons
Get ’em up in the tree
Save your peaches
They really don’t get to me
Talk about somethin’ sure gonna
Make me shout
Go on get some rhubarb pie
That’s what it’s all about “Rhubarb Pie” by John Fogerty
collage by Michelyn Rhubarb and sugar via Wikimedia commons and Dixie© cup DSH Perfumes
Last week, after reviewing Parfums Quartana addictive Mandrake, I noticed how many of you wrote in the comments that you love rhubarb in perfume. Hey, me, too! So, let’s have a sit-down and chat about one of the yummiest rhubarb fragrances out there, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’s of DSH Perfumes Green Rhubarb and Cane Sugar. If you love you some tart, green-fruity rhubarb, set yourself down and the kitchen table and pull up a chair for your friends. This is one is fresh out of the bottle.
Dawn Spencer Hurwitz courtesy of the perfumer
Rhubarb pie evokes that near-mythical American childhood summer of white porches with their gentle screen door slam; the little boy shouts of the backyard softball game next door; swing sets and tree houses; inside, aproned grandmas baking in the kitchen and while a tinny transistor radio window on the windowsill recounts the sports scores, and somewhere down the street, Eddie Cochran is twanging about his summertime blues. Green Rhubarb and Cane Sugar is all about such simple childhood pleasures (John Fogerty’s double-barreled lyrics notwithstanding). Dawn Spencer-Hurwitz writes that her fragrance’s “juicy and uplifting aroma … makes me feel just like a kid again: sitting on my swing set, crunching on freshly cut rhubarb stalks dipped in granulated sugar from a paper dixie cup.”
Rhubarb image via unsplash
DSH Perfumes Green Rhubarb and Cane Sugar is pure July afternoon from its first spray: sharp, refreshing, sweet-tart liquid and green, the kind of always-present green that seems to follow you everywhere in summer outside the cities. My dad used to make a strawberry-rhubarb pie, still famous in my family, in his hip Upper Westside apartment, but it’s aroma was pure rural Long Island bake stall. There’s something about rhubarb’s acidic, stalky smell combined with sugar that summons mid-summer as surely as Fourth of July fireworks, fireflies winking at each other in the dark, and the agitated morning chorus of cicadas. It begins with that unmistakable mouth-puckering bite of fresh green rhubarb, jubilant and juicy.
image via pickpik
Mind you, this fragrance does not have the aggressive bite of, say, CDG Sherbet, but lets the rhubarb juice trickle over rose petal and powdery mimosa so that it softens around the edges. Rhubarb’s shiny tartness is certainly center stage, but Spencer-Hurwitz brings in smudgy dabs of other summer scents – mown grass, unripe pear, green leaves – that give the fragrance the haze of a daydream. Crunchy sugar provides a quiet counterbalance to the acidulous stalks rather than overt sweetness and lends texture, and, as I wear this in Mid-Atlantic humidity, there’s a cucumber-y iced tea note that, while not listed, gives the fragrance a coolness I don’t usually associate with rhubarb’s in-your-face brightness.
There’s nothing left for me to tell you except that Green Rhubarb and Cane Sugar is a joyous antidote to the July torpor. It puts a big, goofy smile on my face every time. May it do the same for you.
Notes: Ambrette seed, amyris, Australian sandalwood, bergamot, Bulgarian rose absolute, Bulgarian rose otto, cabreuva wood, frankincense co2 absolute, galbanum, grandiflorum jasmine, green pear, leafy green (accord), lemon, mimosa absolute, rhubarb, sugar cube accord, Tahitian lime, Tunisian neroli, Virginia cedar.
I received a sample from DSH Perfumes; opinions are my own
–Lauryn Beer, Senior Editor
DSH Perfumes Green Rhubarb and Cane Sugar image courtesy of Dawn Spencer Hurwitz
Thanks to the generosity of Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, we have a 30 ml bottle of DSH Perfumes Green Rhubarb and Cane Sugar for one registered reader in the USA. You must register or your comment will not be eligble. Please leave a comment telling us what strikes you about Green Rhubarb and Cane Sugar based on Lauryn’s review. Draw closes 7/26/2023.
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