Quick Sniffs: Frapin Terre de Sarment, LesNez Turtle Vetiver (Ex. 1), Guerlain Mitsouko (edp), Lostmarch Aod (edt)

LESNEZ TURTLE VETIVER (EXERCISE 1): For serious, straight-up vetiver fanatics only. No one else need apply. If you have to ask yourself whether you're a serious, straight-up vetiver fanatic, then the answer is clearly no and you should pass this fragrance by.

Me? I like vetiver decently enough (see Mitsouko review below), but I don't consider myself part of its inner circle, so Turtle Vetiver, while obviously well-constructed, is not my cup of grass-root tea . . . but that's fine by me. LesNez has several other fragrances that I genuinely appreciate (i.e. L'Antimatiere, Let Me Play the Lion, Manoumalia), so I don't feel at all miffed that I wasn't invited to this particular Vetiver Lover's Only party.

Turtle Vetiver is a limited edition scent. More info from The Scented Salamander: "TURTLE is an open and chaotic network of diverse but interconnecting ideas, people, projects, events and venues linked by American filmmaker, Michael H Shamberg. Perfumer Isabelle Doyen's contribution is a Vetiver EdT which she makes in small quantities and constantly changing formulas."

FRAPIN TERRE DE SARMENT: Something in me likes a Frapin -- I think it's the closet chef that rattles his tin cup on the prison bars until I let him out to play now and again. He usually ends the freedom session by setting the kitchen on fire and smoking out the neighbors, but he does make a mean meringue, so these things have a way of balancing out.

Frapin 1270 was a delicious mash-up of the dessert menu, chock full of honey, raisins, cocoa, vanilla and candied oranges over a silky smooth sandalwood base. Terre de Sarment isn't quite so foodie extreme, but it's still boozy and spicy and leavened with a dry tobacco note that makes the whole thing smell like a few hours of fine after dinner drinks at a plush brass and leather cigar bar (minus the smoke and ash, that is). Which makes sense, after all, since Frapin is first and foremost a French cognac company.

Listed scent notes for Terre de Sarment: grapefruit, neroli, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, orange blossom, incense, benzoin, tobacco and vanilla.

GUERLAIN MITSOUKO: Can someone please explain to me how I could have spent so much time trawling through modern niche perfume houses looking for excellent unisex fragrances when Mitsouko has been around since 1919 and I never even gave it a second glance before today?

I mean, really. I feel like a man who just emerged from his garage after twenty years of dedicated labor to triumphantly hold aloft the wheel. Okay, so it's not new, but it's still a good idea and it's new to me!

Kevin at Now Smell This writes, "On my skin, Mitsouko's overall aroma is of ripe peaches (cushioned on oak moss in a nest of vetiver roots) sprinkled liberally with freshly ground black pepper", and I had a similar experience to his, just with the volume turned way down on the peach, a dash of rose and a lit match tossed into the pepper pot.

The moss nested in vetiver is still an apt description, and gets more pronounced as the fragrance moves into its homestretch. This kills a bit of the enjoyment factor for me as I prefer my drydowns to be less bitter, but it doesn't ruin the fragrance for me entirely (since I'm testing the EDP concentration, it's quite possible the parfum strength has a smoother drydown, though with a more pronounced peach also, I would assume).

I think what surprised me the most is that Mitsouko smells surprisingly contemporary for something that's almost ninety years old. Of course, it's been tweaked to death through the ensuing decades as cheaper synthetic materials have replaced their costly natural counterparts while government regulators slap the allergen label on more and more perfume ingredients. Soon enough, we'll all be left with nothing more fragrant to wear than the sodden tea leaves at the bottom of our china cups (though that would be coffee grounds for the likes of moi).

John Stephen wrote back in 2004: "There is no such thing as 100% allergen free, and the only practical solution is to make sure that the size of the group of people who do react to a particular material is sufficiently small. Then we come to the question of how small is small? If you make it very small, then virtually everything falls into the net and becomes an allergen. Is this the way we are moving?"

I shudder to think.

LOSTMARCH AOD: If I were in Hawaii, or sitting on a lounge chair in St. Tropez, I might have more patience for Aod, but here in Dallas in January, Aod smells watery thin, wan and only mildly of the grapefruit, gardenia and coconut that's promised.

It's sort of pretty in a dull and boring way, but if I'm ever going to actually spring for an aquatic fruity-floral to keep me company in my poolside cabana, it will be Jean Claude Ellena's near brilliant Un Jardin Apres la Mousson. I tested it a few times this past summer while in Maui, and it was an excellent complement to the surroundings.

Wrap It Up: Frapin Terre de Sarment comes in first, because who wouldn't want to smell of cognac and fine tobacco? That's a rhetorical question, so don't inundate me with your cries of "Me Me Me!"; Guerlain Mitsouko places second, but it might have come in first if the drydown hadn't swerved off into bitter, sweaty territory; LesNez Turtle Vetiver places third because even though it's a good example of a talented perfumer serving up vetiver neat, I'm not a fan of vetiver served up neat; and Lostmarch Aod is just D.O.A.

VEERING INTO PHOTOS:

It was time for me to take some new photos of the Jalaine Vetiver bottle. The first photos I'd snapped six months ago just weren't cutting it -- they didn't show off the bottle properly. So when I saw a beam of sunlight streaming across the ledge this morning, I knew I had to hustle my a** and catch it before the magic was gone:

I took several more and added them to the August Jalaine Vetiver post, replacing most of the older photos. Go take a look if you have some time.