Today’s post is courtesy of HemlockSillage’s comment/question on last week’s post: What are scents that seem cold and winter-y to you (HS noted Frederic Malle L’Eau d’Hiver and CdG Zagorsk)?
I am going to go a bit broader and look at what are winter smells here as well.
Winter, as I have said up the wazoo, is not my season. I love a proper snowstorm. I still reference the one early in a January decades ago a year or so before I left the US, when we got two feet of the most gorgeous powdery fluff and for a full day New York City stopped. Plus visiting NYC in 2010 and getting diverted and stranded overnight in Minnesota when JFK was closed due to a huge storm (we got there the next day and the holiday was magical – my son, who was around 9 at the time, got to experience proper sledding and loads of good NYC hot chocolate). I remember fondly winter trips to northern Maine in my teens where again you’re talking two feet or more of beautiful powder – to the extent snowshoes were required.
But. You don’t get that here.
For reasons that are inexplicable, when I did move out of London in 2010, I ended up in an area that boasts 40% more rain than London and has a strange microclimate.
Winter tends to be cold and damp and grey. The upside is my garden harbours a huge jasmine, a very happy dwarf apple tree and sometimes the seagulls drop seeds that come up as surprises (huge vari-coloured poppies, foxgloves one year, different coloured aquilegia).
Recently, I passed a stand of dead trees which had a very winter smell … but it’s really hard to describe. Cold, like the way I think of cold smelling. Not ice ‘smell’, not damp. Just very cold, grey-blue and empty.
Mostly in the winter my village smells of evergreens and pine, leaf mould and wood smoke – and every once in a while you’ll wake to the smell of muck spreading on fields. The wood smoke can vary from fresh piny to brandy and cognac. You get some winter bloomers in January: crepe myrtle and daphne bushes, with their strange, sweet, heady scents. I have a daphne on the north facing side of the garden. I rooted it – very proud of that – from a twiglet I stole from a neighbour’s neglected bush. The last time I went to the garden centre I brought along a small branch with flowers and got it identified. So, I know, truly, that it is a daphne. This morning, I cut off a branch to give the rest of the bush (around 3 feet high) more access to light and air.
There are winter smells of pastries from the bakeries in the next town over: cinnamon, vanilla, dark spices. Cold fish from outside the fishmonger. Cold root veg in boxes inside the farm shop and then sausage baps (big floury rolls) from the outdoor food shed at the local farm shop.
I tend to wear warming scents in the winter as I get cold easily and need heating up. Perfume H Smoke, a hot incense, gets a lot of love in cold, damp weather; Guerlain Shalimar does too, with its non-sweet vanilla and weird bit of lemon floor was (more apparent in the EdT vs the parfum); Serge Lutens Arabie – that huge spice and dried fruit thing — is on big rotation; now, Victoria Beckham 21:50 Reverie, a peculiar, not very sweet, heady, slightly strange vanilla, has been included. If I need big white floral, I’ll pull out the tuberoses, in particular Lutens Tubereuse Criminelle with that unsettling menthol opening.
But perfumes that smell of proper winter to me? That’s a different story. I would say Lutens Fille en Aiguilles, with its pine and stewed apple thing – cold and damp; of incenses, Etro Messe de Minuit is one of the coldest I can recall, with that inside-a-cathedral stone aspect; Perfumer H’s Ink, which is heavy on the vetiver and makes me shiver a bit; and some things with aldehydes. I would put Chanel No 5 into a winter category.
Are you a winter person? Does where you live get ‘proper’ winter weather and do you embrace it? Smells and perfumes that say winter to you?
Pics: Pexels and mine
Obviously since I moved to the other side of the continent to get away from it, you can tell that winter isn’t my favorite. Although I do have pleasant memories of the snow falling in my picturesque New England hometown, looking like a Currier and Ives print, or in Boston or New York or Milwaukee, where I had also lived before settling in SoCal. It’s not the snow so much but the after- those dreary grey months before Spring springs, ice storms (incredibly beautiful, incredibly dangerous), and just the general muck. I did have a perfect snowstorm when I lived at home once: fat blowsy flakes falling like the town was being covered with powdered sugar (and the fact that the air actually warms up when it snows is nice) and the fact that it was late April meant that it was pretty much gone the next day. The downside was since it was late April everybody had taken off their snow tires so travel was pretty much impossible.
Malle Eau d’Hiver is a perfect scent to remind me of that weather. It smells like a snowstorm to me.
I’m going to have to smell Eau d’Hiver again. I recall hating the end of winter in NYC. Freezing cold some of the time and biting wind. But little beauty. Snow makes things so much better.
I love winter because my migraines and allergies are the most well behaved during winter. I love being cozy indoors and reading books. I completely agree with you on Fille en Aiguilles and Messe de Minuit. Own both of them. We’ve had snow twice in the last week, which is unusual for us. We’re having a Polar Vortex, so it’s bitter cold (for us).
Maya wrote about the Polar Vortex below. Sounds rather unnerving. Sadly, I divested my bottle of MdM — don’t know when, don’t know why.
Ohio is in the single digits with snow on the ground. Won’t get out of the single digits until Thursday. I think the rest of winter is going to be nothing but snow storms. Even though Lyric is beautiful in spring and summer, I really love it in winter. L’heure Bleue is gorgeous in winter.
What times are sunrise and sunset right now? It seems to that if you have more light things are easier to manage. I wish I could wear LHB but I can’t.
Heya Cinnamon,
What a fabulous post.
Yes, we love winter. Often we sneak away from the Aussie summer to go winter in Europe. It’s always nice to know we will be warm again at the end of the visit.
My favourite cold perfume was bought in Prague one snowy winters day. It is L’Heure Convoiteé II and we bought it in Cartier on the clock tower square. It’s the chilliest parts of carnation and iris, like powdery snow with a streak of strawberry gelato. BRRRRRR! I love to wear it in the cold and lean fully into the experience.
Portia x
I need to visit Cartier and try more of the l’Heures. I am still planning to do your and Jin’s holiday weird hour walks at some point. And doing so in the snow sounds extra special.
YAY! We love our night jaunts.
What a lovely, evocative post. I really enjoy a virtual visit to your area through your descriptions. I don’t love winter — ready for spring by March — but I also don’t want to live in anything other than a 4-season climate, so here we are. (How can I delight in spring’s arrival if there’s been no winter?) As I’ve mentioned it’s extremely dry here at 7100 ft., and can also be quite cold, we’re at 5F/-15C tomorrow morning, although the snow seems to be missing us. I like “chilly” winter scents more in summer; this time of year it’s all comfort scents, gourmands etc. I agree about the scents you mentioned.
Agree — I would prefer four proper seasons. the first time I visited London was in the early 1980s and it snowed. Like real snow. And then there was a perfect spring and a warm, pleasant summer. No longer. Sounds really cold there but if you can find a means of being comfortable outside I imagine it’s glorious.
We live on the Lee side of the first hill after the Vale of York. From the Common at the top of the hill you can see out to the east coast. We used to count & name the power stations that were visible. This means we get snow from the East (from Russian apparently) from the North (polar) and the West when it’s really cold (it always rains in Manchester). We get fabulous skies.
My granddad Jack taught me to smell coming weather. I can’t describe what snow smells like before it falls, there is almost an electrical smell to it.
The nearest I’ve ever smelled in a fragrance is Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist. I find it unnerving & unwearable.
Another “cold” fragrance is 4160Tuesdays Doe in the Snow. Again not wearable to me.
My cold weather scents are Ambre Sultan, EL Amber Ylang Ylang, Lattafa Raghba, Madonna TorD Naked, Arabian Oud Kalemat & so many more ambery spiced deliciousness.
Skies. That’s something when it’s clear here is miraculous. Just huge and beautiful. You really are quite far north. I cannot do ISM either. Too carroty? I don’t know. Just gives me the twitches. I could certainly smell the coming of snow in NY but not here. Too damp.
I didn’t get carrots from ISM just the smell of dry ice or the smell of -80c freezers.
Watching the skies from my kitchen is a small but profound pleasure
Oh lawd. I think you just sent me down a rabbit hole: Perfume H Smoke (sounds like my thing). I’m off to gather samples. Winter has become my favorite season. “Usually” we can take a break from fire-fighting, brush removal, listening to choppers over head, the sound of firetrucks, etc., and instead can sit “by a fire” and listen to the rain, watch an occasional snow, and work outside at a leisurely pace without sweltering in 105 heat. LA situation has us down in northern California. My plants don’t need watering every day. So yeah, winter is my fav now, and I LOVE winter scents: smoky incense, resin incense, patchouli, amber, woods, nonsweet vanilla, spices (Arabie and Aziyade are great), with some osthmanthus. Spring is sad for me, the end of the heavy hitters, and summer, I move into all things astringent, bitter, cold (Chanel 5 is spring/summer to me), citrus, herbal, juniperus.
Winter smells of cedar, moss, damp earth, rain, cold, leaf fall with a winey mix, smoke from people’s chimneys.
I’m curious where about you are. I lived “near” Newbury for a year and a half, then in Newbury proper for another year and a half. The weather was an adjustment, but in retrospect not too bad: showery, rainy misty, shower mist, foggy mist, light precipitation etc. I recall the forecasts were a hoot for an American. We also got snow, beautiful snow out on the country.
I really love Smoke. It’s incense but also rooty, but not freezing rooty. More earthy roots. Do individuals do the brush removal etc or is that local government? Newbury … no, that’s north of me and inland. If you look at a map of southern England and run your finger east from the western edge of Cornwall along the Atlantic coast you’ll get to a seaside town of Exmouth and to the left of that an estuary, the Exe. That’s where I am — along the estuary a bit north of Exmouth. That’s why we’ve got the strange microclimate.
Not a winter person at all. I hate being cold and I hate driving in the winter. I used to try and snowshoe, and do fun things but we have not had much snow at all (except for last winter, when we got an entire winter’s worth of snow in 24 hours. I knew I left the truck in the driveway but I had to shovel down to find it.).
Winter smells-your winter is very different than our. Almost nothing grows here in the winter. Around the end of March you can find a few snowdrops. Winter smells? Snow and ice have particular smells, and I do love the quiet that comes with a deep snow fall. I love the scent and sound of ice cracking in the rivers in the spring-it smells like cold rot. Hear me out-what we smell is last years vegetation, caught in the ice. When you smell, and hear, the ice cracking you know spring is on its way. I work for a fuel company so I associate that with winter, too.
When I lived in New Brunswick the Saint John River was used as an ice road. It’s dangerous cause it doesn’t freeze all the way across. Seems like every year in the spring someone would lose a truck in the ice, or some ice shacks stayed on the ice too long and went through. After the spring floods FB would be flooded with pictures of lost decks and things that had floated down the river-if this is yours come get it.
In my mind there’s only eight more weeks of truly awful driving to get through 🙂
We’re on daffodils but they aren’t in bloom yet. Snowdrops should start showing up in a few weeks. The bluebell leaves are growing. I do not like January. I know many people say February is really hard for them, but for me it’s January. And sometimes March can be difficult. Depends on storms. That’s amazing on the river freezing. But it also sounds like the ice lulls people into a false sense of security…
No. Not a winter person. I understand completely why many animals hibernate. Right now (Midwest) we are in a Polar Vortex. The temperature is 6F/-14C and they say it feels like -11F/-24C and we have 25mph wind gusts. Hibernate it is.
The only thing “perfumery” is that one of my daughter’s birthday gifts from me was a travel size bottle of St. Clair Scents Casablanca. Beautiful and perfect for daydreaming of warm, balmy, places with the scent of white flowers carried on the breeze!
That term, Polar Vortex, is sort of extraordinary. I expect it’s not fun to experience but it makes me think of fairy tales. Casablanca sounds beautiful — and very curious about Blue Marble. But, I doubt this is a company that ships outside the US.