Laura Slatkin via autism speaks©
In June, Nest Fragrances released Cocoa Woods, a new eau de parfum honoring and celebrating perseverance through adversity. Inspired by Nest Fragrances owner Laura Slatkin’s personal life challenges, Cocoa Woods is the 12th Eau de Parfum created for the Nest Fine Fragrance range. I love that Nest Fragrances uses top tier Master Perfumers such as Christophe Laudamiel and Rodrigo Flores-Roux to create scents that are interesting, compelling, easy wearing, flat-out lovely and very importantly, totally affordable. Cocoa Woods in keeping with Nest tradition is created by yet another world class perfumer Jerome Epinette.
Illustration by Will Cotton©
Nest Fragrances Cocoa Woods is a 360 degree turn in a different and wonderful direction from the previous release last February; the luminous and beautiful Wisteria Blue. Exploring the genre coined “Neo-gourmand”, Nest Fragrances Cocoa Woods, is essentially a smooth-as-butter creamy sandalwood and cedar-ish bon-bon enrobed in a luscious bittersweet dry cocoa powder. It may sound a bit curious but trust me when I say that it works exceedingly well. Having grown up in Northern California surrounded by Sequoias/Giant Redwoods, I am quite intimate with their dry, sweet, and fusty smelling soft bark, as well as the bitter astringent vibrant green of the needles.
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That wood forest loamy smell is a perfect foil for the rich chocolate fragrance with its own woody-sweet and slightly acid coffee notes. I love how the beautiful wood notes (one of my favorites) plays off of the cocoa, almost like spooning a fine 80% Scharfenberger dark cocoa powder with a handmade aromatic cedar wooden spoon. These two notes are entwined as finely as a DNA strand, each providing their best attributes while maintaining their own scented autonomy, dancing and swirling as closely and intimately as a pair of sensual tango partners at the end of a night-long Milonga. I can absolutely see rocking this fragrance best in the cooler weather rather than the humid hot days of summer, and for that very reason Nest Fragrances Cocoa Woods will be sitting front and center on my desk just waiting for the weather to turn, which here in the great Pacific Northwest is only about 8 weeks away. Crazy as it may sound, I can’t wait! Notes: Bittersweet cocoa, Sequoia wood accord, Tiaré blossom, Thai ginger, White Sandalwood
Disclosure: Many thanks to Nest for the sample. The opinions are my own.
–Robert Herrmann, Senior Editor
-Art Direction: Michelyn Camen, Editor-in-Chief
Photo by Robert H.
Thanks to our friends at Nest Fragrances we have one 50 ml. bottle and one 8 ml. Rollerball of Nest Fragrances Cocoa Woods for one registered reader in the USA, so be sure to register if you have not done so. To be eligible please let us know what you enjoyed about Robert’s review of Nest Fragrances Cocoa Woods and if you have a favorite Nest Fragrance or think neo-gourmands are a trend. Draw closes 7/13/2018
We announce the winners only on our website so like Cafleurebon and use our Blog feed…or your dream prize will be just spilled perfume