The First Few Sips are the Hardest

"The first few sips are the hardest", I tell my daughter, who's in her favourite coffee shop in Vancouver, sipping on her favourite beverage ever, which she always drinks. Except, she hasn't had it for almost two years. We simply weren't around.

First comes the ecstatic response when seeing the cup, filled over the brim with this crushed ice and mocha. Then comes a sip, and her facial expression changes. There is nothing wrong with the taste. It's exactly as she remembered it. Perhaps it's even too much the same as she remembers it. I can see how with every sip she's turning sadder, getting deeper into another place and another time then this very moment in the coffee shop where we're at. And the tears start welling up.

The first few sips are the hardest. The first one is a big wave of happiness, familiarity, comfort. Like the first time she had it (probably with her dad). Then she remembers sitting next to him in the coffee shop on Robson street , watching attentively over his shoulders as he's writing code on his laptop, for hours on end. It's a happy memory alright. Except that they don't do this anymore. And the wave of happiness is washed over by a tsunami of sadness, with rushing memories of all the good things that were and ain't no more. And also all the not so great memories like that time when mamma ordered the wrong drink and... oops, Mom, my coffee spilled on the floor. And before you even know it, she misses everything - elementary school, and summer camp, and this babysitter, and another. And every each person that ever got her that drink in that very same coffee shop.

The first few sips are the hardest. And if you're experiencing this flavour nostalgia for the first time, after many years of not tasting (or smelling!) something that has been deeply engrained in your life for ever so long, and don't have the words to express it, or the emotional tools to cope with it, it might become a natural disaster of personal magnitude. Maybe you'll never even drink coffee again after this. It's just too much like an emotional rollercoaster, with the ups so high and the lows so devastating that this aroma has now registered as a dangerous thing in your mind.

Odourama for the Dead

In honour of my dearly departed grandfather, I've set to create a little shrine in his memory, which I have fondly decided to call "Odourama" (you'll see why shortly). Today is Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) - the day when Mexicans honour their loved ones who have passed away. Inviting their spirits with their favourite foods, objects and hobbies, and inviting them to the family dinner, quite literally.

The normalization of death, making it part of life, is a new concept to me and foreign to my culture. Many years have passed since my grandfather's premature death (on my 13th birthday), and I have grown up much more since. I never had the tools to really cope with this death, and I am thankful that no one close to me has passed in all these years. Creating a shrine that will symbolically invite my grandfather's spirit for just one day (we don't want to disturb the dead from their peaceful rest) is stepping away from my heritage and traditions; creating it prove to be something very personal and meaningful to me.

If scent has the power to banish evil spirits, surely it can invite the spirits of our loved ones. It may not be as meaningful to the spirit as it is to the living person making the invitation. I was only a child when my grandfather passed, and I can only remember some of the things my grandfather enjoyed in his earthly life. Strong black espresso, bittersweet chocolate, grapefruit and cornflakes for breakfast, and Old Spice cologne (which I could not find a trace of anywhere). He also picked Vol de Nuit for my grandmother's signature perfume many years ago, so I put a bottle of that in lieu of Old Spice. I'm sure that smelling my grandma's favourite perfume will please him just as much!

Next year I will build a real one with little skeleton sculpture to celebrate his life's accomplishments. But for now, using the essential oils of grapefruit, coffee and marigold (the Day of the Dead symbolic flower) work just as effectively. It is all about creating the space in your home for those no longer with us. Because we are physical beings, we need those physical reminders, even if once a year, that our loved ones still are with us in some invisible way. Now I'm going to brew some dark coffee. I've already got the coffee table set for three - with After Eight (his favourite chocolate), some cookies, and the great granddaughter he's never lived long enough to meet.

Vetiver Noir OOAK Perfume

Coffee Beans, a photo by Stirling Noyes on Flickr.

Last month, I went back to my old sketch vetiver formula for Vetiver Noir (from 2007) and decided to make it better. Sometimes great idea take a few years to materialize, and I'm glad that no one bought this before, so I was able to turn this into a singular, One Of A Kind perfume and offer it anew on my website, in the semi-custom-perfume. The way it works with these OOAK perfumes is, that instead of paying full price for a custom scent you get to pick a singular phenomenon from my personal lab experiments and archives, and make it your own. I will not sell the perfume (or the formula) to anyone else after you do so; and when you run out - you can order a refill for the same price as custom scent refills go for. 

To the original formula, with Indonesian vetiver, dark-roast Arabica coffee, Ruh Khus and Cardamom - I added some surprising elements that have a dark, intense quality - yet create a very sophisticated aura. Using Bourbon Vetiver was a big twist of faith here, as it is a very rare distillation, and with that smoky, dark, nutty quality that makes vetiver connoisseurs swoon (and those who don't get vetiver in other occastions might just fall for it after smelling this varietal).

Dark-roasted coffee beans complement the nutty, dark texture of Vetiver Bourbon and Indonesian vetiver oils. Ruh Khus and baked Indian earth contribute warmth and depth, accented with hints of nutmeg and hazelnuts.

The new OOAK Vetiver Noir turned into something I'm so pleased with I'm almost tempted to take off-line... That's how much I love it. So make it your own before I change my mind!

Vetiver Bath

Vetiver Roots 02, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

This afternoon I blended some vetiver bath salts... You may remember from a short while back this summer, I mentioned how unpopular were the Lavender bath salts, and how I was going to replace them with a vetiver scent... The lavender is probably not the problem, but rather - the accompanying notes (or their names... go figure): licorice and vanilla. Vanilla is popular alright, but licorice tends to divide people: most either love it or hate it. Very few feel lukewarm, on the fence or just pleasantly ok about it. And for the most part, it is an acquired taste... There are some cultural preferences around licorice. I knew for quite sometime that most Asian cultures do not enjoy licorice candy or licorice flavour (though they seem quite fond of star anise! Go figure…). And just recently, I learned from my Swiss intern Olivier, that in Europe there is something that is called “the licorice border” that runs along the Elbe river: everyone north of that line loves licorice, and to the south of it – they cannot tolerate it… The border runs along a river.

Back to vetiver: the bath salts I’ve created are a simplified version of Vetiver Racinettes. It has a hint of coffee, spices, wild mushroom and tarragon (can’t escape the licorice, can I?) but really, just a hint. It’s all about vetiver, and a lot of Australian sandalwood to boot – which gives it this smooth woody scent which I find to work beautifully in body products. I used some special salts in this which I’m very excited about: Ancient Canadian bath salts from Saskatchewan, Dead Sea salts from Israel. So you can understand why I’m feeling really at home with this bath…

While my stuffed grapevine leaves were cooking on the stove*, I immersed myself in a Vetiver Ritual Bath this evening and the scent lingered for a long, relaxing hot bath even though I haven’t used that much salt; and my skin still smells delicately of vetiver and sandalwood as I write this.

* You won't believe it! I found some freshly picked leaves in the farmers' market last Saturday and I'm making them for my brother's birthday feast tomorrow... So excited: it's been 2 years since I had these last, probably 3 since I last made them from fresh leaves!!!

New: Custom Coffrets @ Ayala Moriel Parfums

I've just added to the website custom coffrets of our miniatures, encased in a nice long gift box - perfect for travel or for gift giving.

Pick your favourite 8 perfumes for your own custom coffret, or select the ones I've put together:

The Tea Time Coffret is a collection of tea perfumes, including Charisma (green tea), Fetish (green tea), Gaucho (yerbamate), Immortelle l'Amour (rooibos), Finjan (for the helpless coffee addicts among you!), Kinmokusei (green tea), Roses et Chocolat (has a matching perfumed tea) and The Purple Dress (black tea).

The Gourmand Coffret contains all of our mouthwatering gourmand perfumes, including Cabaret (Coconut and Rahat Loukum), Film Noir (dark chocolate & patchouli), Finjan (spiced Turkish coffee) Guilt (caramel chocolate with orange blossom), Black Licorice (star anise and vanilla), Immortelle l'Amour (cinnamon waffles with maple), Roses et Chocolat (roses, amber and chocolate), and Sahleb (milky pudding dessert with rosewater, orris and butter).

Good Enough to Eat

I'm often asked, if and when or why don't I have my own line of scented body products. My answer to this 3-part question is that I would love to create an original line of my very own beautifully scented natural body care. Which means, I would like to have my very own formulations rather than take some existing bases and add a scent to them. This is not advisable from technical point of view, not to mention marketing wise: each scent has a different chemical make up, therefore it is hard to predict how it will interact with a given base or the other. Often times, when a fragrance is added to, say, an existing unscented body lotion "base" - the lotion simply breaks down. Not a pretty site, but also not something you would want to put on your skin.

There are many technical difficulties, challenges and problems when developing a new skin care line: the texture, fragrance and performance of the product (i.e.: how does it make your skin feel after), not to mention packaging. Unlike my existing products, which I assume most of my customers use when their hands are clean and fairly dry - one could not expect such handling of a body products that will be most likely stored and used in the bathroom - or even the bathtub or shower! I won't bore you with the details of what it takes to develop the line from start to finish, but I will let you in on some of my recent experiments of very simple body care products that are all natural, free of preservatives, that will make your skin feel good and smell fantastic.

I've already begun my adventure with the bath salts for Mother's Day which require a very simple procedure of blending essential oils with a salt-mix. The next step for me was to figure out a formula for a sugar scrub that will be as fun to use as some of my favourite body products. I love sugar scrubs, and especially the more luxurious ones, because they do two tasks at once: the exfoliate my skin while leaving it gently moisturized. A good sugar scrub, in my opinion, needn't be followed by a body lotion or a cream. It should be the kind that will emulsify with the bathing water and leave the skin soft and smooth...

A while back, I created a body-butter consistency sugar scrub. The challenge with that was that it left the skin a little too greasy, plus the butters and some of the oils (i.e.: coconut oil) harden too much in cooler weather. So my task today was to make a sugar scrub that will look pretty much the same in most room temperature ranges.

My first trial was one based on Guilt perfume, which I've been meaning to make for a loooong time. The concept was to use ground up cacao nibs as an additional exfolliant besides the sugar. Although I was tempted to use cacao butter, I decided to opt for something more stable: shea oil, which is liquid rather than solid in room temperature. Along with vegetable glycerine, fractionated coconut oil and vitamin E it's bound to leave behind a silky-smooth skin. The ground cacao nibs add a nice texture and an earthy, irresistible yummy chocolate smell, which I only enforced with very little bit of cacao and vanilla absolute. It also has sweet orange and wild orange oils, and of course - orange flower absolute. Using the scrub in the bath was a real treat: it's like playing with mud but not really getting dirty beacuse it is so easy to wash off (it would have been a totally different story if I put cacao powder instead of the nibs!). And it makes the skin look all dark and tan or for the duration of the scrubbing ceremony, which I thoroughly enjoy myself. Yet the nicest surprise was that the orange blossom lingered on the skin for about an hour after bathing!

Coffee, Chocolates - A Perfect Swap!

I've been swapping on Make Up Alley for a few years now, and always enjoyed the experience. It's like having fragrant pen-pals, and adds a personal touch to internet communications (if any other form of communication even exist these days...).

Each swapper packages their goods differently, and most add something: a card, a note, surprising samples... You can imagine my delight when a recent swap arrived, professionally packaged (a little voice was telling me: "you should hire this lady to help you with shipping!"), and containing the two above items.

Nyakio's Kenyan Coffee & Sugar Scrub was the "official" part of the trade. I was craving it for the longest time and I must blame MUA for that: a trial-size jar of this delicious sugar scrub was an "extra" from another swap and I fell for it hopelessly, mostly because it smells so good and feels so good to rub coffee and sugar on your skin! All in all, sugar scrubs are becoming my favourite way to exfoliate the skin and at the same time it also gets moisturized. I should start making my own, because I run through these way too quickly...

My dear swapper Lauren also had the generosity and patience to go into town and pick me a box of Eaton's Magic Morsels - handmade chocolates from her home town. How sweet is that!
And totally fitting with the theme I had going on around Valentine's Day. So there you go - you've got another chocolatier on your list. You mostly get truly American treats here: chocolate stuffed with coconut or orange filling, marshmallows, caramel. Magic Morsel have a knack for packaging their chocoltes in quite an unusual way. They seem to interpret "chocolate box" quite literally: a box made of chocolates, in attractive shapes, filled with more chocolates!