Chocolate Covered Tuesday: Aftelier Cacao and Profumi di Pantelleria Jailia

There are any number of perfume snobs who will turn up their noses at the gourmand genre, complaining that anyone who wants to smell like a spiced cookie is obviously emotionally stunted and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a real perfume counter (much less out of their padded cell), but just as, say, Marvin Gaye elevated the pop music genre in 1970 with an under four minute toe-tapping, top-40 paean to the strength of the human spirit during a time of cultural crisis, art is where you find it, or rather, where you allow it to find you.

AFTELIER CACAO: "I like to envision perfume as a piece of precious jewelry, created through an artisan process," stated Mandy Aftel, founder and perfumer for Aftelier, and Cacao is exactly that -- a black opal of a fragrance, dark and earthy yet shot through with bolts of color.

The decision to infuse a deep, bitter cocoa with the fleshy odor of jasmine and the sweet bright essence of blood orange was inspired. Not too sugary, not too bitter, with the jasmine adding that necessary pinch of salt that straddles the line between sweet and savory. The resulting blend is a fragrance that skips across its rich, dusky tightrope like a seasoned acrobat without a slip, a fumble or even a drop of nervous sweat.

Other reviewers have compared Cacao to the cheap Terry's chocolate oranges you can pick up in drugstores and grocery shelves, but I beg to differ. Cacao is to a Terry's Chocolate Orange what a bottle of Screaming Eagle is to a gallon of Thunderbird -- and don't blame the artist behind the juice if you can't tell the difference.

***Aftel utilizes only pure essential oils in the creation of her fragrances and happily cops to being a headliner in the world of natural perfumery. My two complaints regarding all-natural perfumes are that 1.) they're exponentially more expensive than a fragrance crafted with synthetics (Cacao runs about $600.00 an ounce), and 2.) they're already fading away just when I'm starting to enjoy them on my skin, but I was surprised at the longevity of Cacao. It's still over too soon, but it lasts a good two hours longer than what I've experienced when testing scents from other natural perfume houses.

PROFUMI DE PANTELLERIA JAILIA: A thick potent blast of a gourmand, stuffed with chocolate, patchouli, a riot of fruits, honey, vanilla and amber. If you think it sounds amazing, it is, and if you're also thinking it could very well suck all the air out of a room, it can.

Jailia is often compared to Thierry Mugler's Angel, but favorably so, as in "Like Angel, this fragrance is a bit loud, but the similarity ends there for me. I cannot wear Angel, it is harsh and ugly on me. Jailia is a much better blended perfume" (that's a direct quote from a customer review at the Lucky Scent website) -- so if you liked the idea of Angel but found it too strident to actually wear, Jailia might just be the sugar in your cup of tea, so to speak.

There was a point about an hour into it that it smelled remarkably similar to Cacao, which I was testing out on my opposite arm at the time, but then the two parted ways, never to meet again. Jailia is more directly sweet than Cacao, the scent notes more caramelized, the fruits a lot jammier and the drydown more about vanilla and patchouli instead of carrying the deep cocoa to its earthy conclusion (though it does boast a longer lifespan). It's a very well-executed gourmand, but it's not a work of olfactory art.

Cacao, however . . . I mean, it doesn't at all match the sofa or the drapes, yet I'm still scouting out wall space.

UPDATE:

I remembered I had a vial of BEAUTIFUL US CHOCOLATE COSMOS in my sample drawer, so I dug it out and gave it a spin, you know, since it's Chocolate Covered Tuesday and all -- and I can report that it's a nice enough chocolate fragrance, if you want to smell like a Terry's chocolate orange . . . *rimshot*

But seriously, its sole reason for existence appears to be to hijack the chocolate, jasmine and orange trinity of Cacao and then smother it in cinnamon for a spicy Halloween candy effect.

No thanks.

When all is said and done, I think I'll stick to my bottle of Il Profumo Chocolat Amere. What? Stop looking at me like that! Of course I was going to tell you I'd purchased a bottle of Chocolat Amere . . . I was just, uh, waiting for the right time?

UPDATE 2:

Another chocolate scent that's worth mentioning is Chocolate Amber from profumo.it -- a blend of dark cocoa, vanilla and tonka bean (tonka is a kind of leafy, caramelized scent).

If you've ever walked into a high-end boutique that specializes in expensive dark chocolates, then you'll immediately understand what perfumer Dominique Dubrana has accomplished: an atmosphere of deep, rich satisfaction.

All profumo.it fragrances are all-natural, which lends Chocolate Amber subtlety, despite its sweetness.