Food and fragrance are natural companions. Unless someone is wearing too much fragrance on a night of fine dining, then it can be a bit challenging to find the common ground. I know when I go out for a dinner at a four-star restaurant I always lean over my dish and inhale before I take my first bite. The different aromas are as much of the experience, for me, as the actual eating of the food. In Spain at a Michelin three-star restaurant named El Celler de Can Roca fragrance plays a co-starring role in pastry chef Jordi Roca’s creations. He has made desserts meant to evoke Calvin Klein Eternity, Lancome Miracle and Terre D’Hermes. These desserts were inspired by the fragrance. Sr. Roca then decided to reverse engineer the process and along with a dessert called Lemon Distillation he included a fragrance meant to enhance the citrus notes of the dessert. After a number of requests to buy the perfume Sr. Roca has bottled it and under the Roca Perfums label released Nuvol di Llimona (Lemon Cloud).

The dessert which Nuvol di Llimona is based on is a combination of lemon sponge cake, milk, and sugar. The fragrance definitely contains all three of those components to be experienced. The lemon of this fragrance is a lot more muted than I think lovers of citrus fragrances might like. I found Nuvol di Llimona to be much more of a gourmand fragrance with a couple of interesting amuse bouche notes tossed in to the mix to make it interesting.

The early going of Nuvol di Llimona is citrus and sugar. It reminds me of those candied lemon jelly candies. The sweetness almost overwhelms the citrus and definitely keeps it attenuated. This is why if you’re looking for a zesty lemon fragrance Nuvol di Llimona is not for you. What makes it interesting to me is the next phase as the lemon sponge cake soaked in milk seems to rise off of my skin. The perfumer AugustiVidal really does a great job keeping the milk accord in line with the rest of the notes and so the lemon cuts across the milkiness and then, like a special surprise, a hint of lily of the valley pops up. The first time I wore Nuvol di Llimona I convinced myself that note was coming from somewhere else other than the perfume on my skin. It turned out that it was part of the composition once I looked at the note list and it fits surprisingly well. The base is all rich vanilla custard sweet and thick. Again AugustiVidal chooses to toss a little extra into the finale and musk adds a bit of animalic contrast to the end of Nuvol di Llimona.

Nuvol di Llimona has average longevity and average sillage.

I felt my experience with Nuvol di Llimona was a bit incomplete. I would like to know if this fragrance really does have the desired effect of enhancing my experience of the citrus notes in the Lemon Distillation dessert. I can see where this might be the case but as a stand-alone fragrance without Jordi Roca’s spectacular dessert to go with it, it is just a pleasant lemon gourmand. If that is your piece of cake then order up a fragrant slice and dig in.

Disclosure: This review was based on a sample purchased from Luckyscent.

–Mark Behnke, Managing Editor