Joulumuori

[voodoobaby]

Old Lady Christmas, the sweet, smiling wife of Finland's Joulupukki. Her scent invokes the comforts of Christmastime and the warmth of love and cheerful companionship: a glowing hearth, luumukiisseli, riisipuuro, and sima.

Oh my God. Want to eat.

This smells delicious. The spiced plum/prune smell is amazing and backed with the warm fireplace scent and a touch of sweet cinnamon.

Let me just say that the hearth smell is perfect. This is what I wanted the two Hearth blends to smell like. It's so comforting, and it really does smell like the real thing.

Luckily, the foodiness doesn't turn weird on me like a lot of creamier blends do. Cockaigne turned into unwashed crotch on me, and various other vanillas end up smelling like burnt rubber or weird plastic. This does none of those. It's just sweet, warm, spicy goodness. This is a perfectly comforting cold weather scent. Mmm.

[cupcakegernade]

I am typically not a lover of foody scents, but this one may change my mind. When I open up the imp, the mead is the first thing to come up, but is backed by the rice pudding. It smells so divine. On my skin, the prune comes in and begins to mingle with the rice pudding, and the mead recedes a little, but still it adds a touch of sweetness. Once it has dried, this becomes smoky and the prune soup becomes more of a prune drizzled with golden honey. This has quite a bit of depth to, but it does close to the skin, I can really only smell it when I press my hand to my nose. I truly adore this and cannot stop sniffing my hand. It is that delicious.

Edited December 11, 2010 by scopoliacarniolica

[Circaea]

Sadly, for me Joulumuori isn't creamy, plummy or sweet. It just gives me a sharp, evergreen pine/juniper men's cologne, and a stabbing sinus headache, confirming my general preconception that Weenie and Yule oils are not my thing, as a rule.

[sunlitgarden]

In the decant: Anise? Fennel? Some sort of Apiaceous note. (I'm trained in botany, I can't help it!)

 

On my skin: Yep, getting licorice for sure now. That's the dominant note in the wet stage. There's also a bit of smokiness (the "hearth" note, presumably). Kind of boozy and sweet as it dries (the mead, I guess). Mostly I get anise and smoke, though, which is a little weird, but not unpleasant. As it dries more, it turns into a lovely warm spiced scent with hearth-smoke. A winter scent for sure, but this is really nice.

[Missy_killer]

Sooo...uhm..I have no idea what the notes mean, since I'm not knowledgable in Finnish at all. So, this will be a completely blind review!

 

To my nose: This is spicy, like cinnamon. And something dark fruity. Pom? Might be more like plum, like Prunella. It's a dark reddish-purple fruit at least.

 

On: A quick burst of purple fruits and then I get cinnamon. I loooooooove cinnamon, so this is a great start of a scent! It's also kind of sweet, like cinnamon powder sweetend with sugar. I think the dark fruits are lying underneath, they are starting to come forward a little more. Dark cherries maybe?

 

I'm sad to report that after a couple of minutes the cinnamon disappears. I'm getting a rather "tame" syrup after the cinnamon left. I'm saying tame because it isn't in-your-face-sweet or sharp that I sometimes find fruity syrups to be.

 

A little like fruity syrup and that's about it, nothing more fancy happens after that stage. I'm now reading others reviews of this and some people seem to have gotten a lovely foodie scent.

If only the cinnamon had stayed, it would've been such a good spicy fruit-scent.

[Serena Reverberi]

I just got frimped this oil and.... rice porridge? how do you guys get rice porridge?

 

Maybe it's because it aged but I smell a burst of citrus in the beginning, a teeny bit of booze and then it settles into the smell of burnt chestnut shells.

So odd.

[filigree_shadow]

My little decant is obviously super aged at this point, so I'm sure it's different now than it was when I first got it, but I liked it enough then to keep it, and I still like it now. This smells like a very comforting, kind of nutty, sweet fruit scent. It's that strange little nutty quality about it that gives it the comfort, I think.

 

I used to have a bottle of Hearth back in the day, and when I say "nutty," that's what it reminds me of. That chestnut type of scent from Hearth. But with a distinct sweetness over the top. It's really nice. Definitely a comfort scent, to me.

[Lucchesa]

I got a bottle of this recently at a great price from a generous forumite, and when Thursday was cool and drizzly, I decided to give it a go. It is beautiful, warm and comforting on me, with something of the plum of Bensiabel but better staying power on me. I usually can't do foodie scents because the pastry note is awful on me, but here it's rice pudding, so I guess gluten-free works for me on an olfactory level. Plummy, a little nutty, a little spicy, a little smoky. I just kept wanting to eat my wrists.

[Spirit.Finn]

(This is new from the Lab this year, not aged) Right when I put it on I felt like I had walked into a Christmas cabin with a nice fire (well drafted... not smoky like Mat Night and other really smoke-heavy fire scents at all... smells like an actively cackling fire. No clue how they did that without it also being super "smoky") and the food bits smell kind of like a rich bread pudding or sweet rice pudding without being overly sweet. There is a bit of raisin for me which was a little odd in a perfume but was not at all out of place as it matched the rest of the smells. I suppose mingled with the raisin was a tiny bit of booze but that never amped for me. The raisin faded and I was left with the comforting, warm, lightly spiced notes and this morning I still have a faintly warm, barely sweet scent right at the skin. It's a different sweet than the really sweet foodies... and different than the general vanilla-sweet that a lot of the perfumes leave behind. You know how bread can turn sweet after you chew it for a while (I mean... it is a carb and they usually bake with sugar, too)? It's more reminiscent of that. Obviously this isn't an every day kind of pick but it was pretty much exactly what I pictured and was hoping for! Love it!

[suki]

At first sniff, I mostly get a spicy plum. Though others mentioned cinnamon specifically, that's not what I'm getting. More of a spice *mix* as one might find in spice cake.

 

As it begins to bloom, wet, on my skin, it's becoming more and more spicy, sultry. It reminds me a little of Kyphi incense with a bit of plum wine dashed in for good measure.

 

In all, it's a strong, sweet, rich spice scent. I sadly get no rice pudding, which I was very much looking forward to. However, I think this has the potential for loads of sexy wearings and am hopeful a bit of aging will do it some good.

[gwynethr]

I hoarded my decant for years, which had gone from a scent I liked to one I adored with age, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. But I was so excited to see it again after finally using up the last of my decant. It isn't quite the same as I remember it, I'm not picking up the rice pudding or really anything specific at all except some sharp spices, but it's definitely not as jarring and disappointing a change as my beloved Hanerot Halalu was this year, and I'm reasonably certain this will age back into that scent I like. I think it's there underneath the sharpness.

 

On me it has a lot of throw, and I think it lasts about as long as the original version. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it ages, and if the sharpness mellows out to become that wonderful sort of kitchen at Christmas, winter hearth scent I remember.

[highgarden]

2017 version: For some reason, this one is turning out to be very perfume-y, borderline floral on me. I think it might be the mead and prune soup combination that's making that weirdly spicy bloom hit me in the face so hard. It's been two hours since I've applied it and the throw is so strong, which is starting to give me a headache. I'm hoping that this will mellow out in a bit so I can get to the hearth part of this, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

[Elspethdixon]

2017 edition:

In the imp, it's light, sweet, and fruity. For a few minutes after I put it on, the mead/sima note does that musty/fusty thing blends with honey notes sometimes do on my skin during the wet stage, but after about ten minutes that's gone away and I get effervescent mead and a hint of fruity prunes. This smells like a nice, fizzy LUSH bath bomb with a milk and honey/plum pudding theme.

[ShannonElisabethJones]

This is the 2017 version.

 

In the bottle, this is spicy and sweet. And booooooooooooooooooozy! Like mead.

 

Freshly applied it keeps that spicy sweetness and warms into something almost...creamy? Something I can definitely imagine eating for a Yule celebration.

 

As it dries it gets foodier and almost herbal. Helps tone down the sweetness.

 

So this one is definitely a keeper.

 

**EDIT** So I just remembered why I got this one: the notes sounded a little similar to The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, one of my favorite (now discontinued) scents. And it does, a bit! It's more foody and a little more floral (now that it's dried a bit), but I am definitely smelling the similarities.

Edited January 21, 2018 by Sionann

[gloame]

Yummy and...kind? It smells very nice, like someone who'd give you an orange currant scone. There's something magical to it, like sparkling spells zipping around. Honestly, I'm pretty sure this is what Molly Weasley's kitchen smells like at Christmas.

Where I'd wear it: The Burrow, December