Rosemary & Sea

Rosemary & Sea, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Before I went on to another bottle, I made some adjustments to what I told you about earlier. I sharpened and accentuated a few ideas – i.e.: increasing the seaweed a bit, as well as the spruce absolute and added some cypress to flesh out the woody element and in hopes of making it more “masculine” so to speak. I also increased the violety presence by adding a smidgeon of cassie absolute. I also added some citrus notes – bergamot and lemon – to brighten things up a bit and give the whole thing a lift. Egyptian geranium was necessary for added body at the heart notes, and to accompany it - a bit of a very high quality palmarosa, which added a clean yet floral freshness, expansive airiness to the composition. This still remained true to the original concept but just a little more developed.

I was also hoping to increase the salty levels in the composition by adding some atranol-free oakmoss, which I find to be more sheer and marine-like than the nearly ambery-musky full-profile oakmoss absolute (all oakmoss absolute sold these days have the atranol removed. It’s part of EU regulations, and since all oakmoss is produced in Europe – usually harvested in former Yugoslavia and extracted in Grasse) that’s all we’ve got, unless we stashed some oakmoss away.

At the same time, I felt that the rosemary was still quite strong, and the seaweed was not enough present. Which is quite strange given how potent it always seems on its own and how light the rest of the notes were.