Tarasque

[ltrittipoe]

Spiced tea, leather, liquidambar, and labdanum.

Really pretty straightforward - and really lovely.

All the notes are present and accounted for on my skin - and blend together to make a leather/tea/spice/amber-y haze.
At first I get the tea, with cinnamon? The scent of the spices remindsme of the Good Earth Sweet & Spicy tea blend, and the spices in that tea are cinnamon, lemongrass, peppermint, anise, ginger & orange peel. Not that I can pick out any of those!! Just that I get that same sweet/spicy tea feeling from this. The leather is warm and worn, definitely brown leather. Both liquidambar and labdanum are supposed to be reminiscent of ambergris, and I am absolutely getting that in the background - that may be what is making the leather seem worn and soft to me. They are just warming and softening everything up.

So, overall - warm, sweet, spicy tea & leather. I really like this blend, and I am not usually a fan of tea scents. I think the spices make the difference.

[Lethran]

In bottle: I’m guessing licorice tea, because I’m getting licorice as the strongest note. I am not familiar with sweet gum resin, so I’m guessing it’s the resiny scent that isn’t the labdanum. If so, it’s kind of cool and doing interesting things with the tea. The leather is medium strength and mostly working with the resin I’m not a labdanum fan, but it’s clever here, giving it an edge it wouldn’t otherwise have without taking over. It seems well blended and unusual. Wet: Tea dominant on the skin with the liquidamber as strong support. It’s still licoricey, but less overwhelmingly so. The labdanum stays in similar proportion, working with the sweetgum. The leather gets stronger as it warms, eventually overtaking the tea to become dominant. The leather and licorice are really good friends, and I like the result, so it’s all good. Dry: Mostly leather and.. clean laundry? No really. It smells like cotton tee shirts and de4nim fresh from the dryer. No really. I have no explanation, but I love it. Leather and clean laundry is a fine scent.

[zankoku_zen]

Spice, tea, amber and a hint of leather. The tea note is pretty strong, and its very well blend and unusual. Tiny hint of licorice.

 

Warm, spicy, tea.

[cometgirl21]

This is Dorian with licorice added. It's really nice and lighter than I was expecting.

[Viridian]

Purchased this one at Dragon*Con before I knew what any of the notes were - I'd guessed vanilla/amber. I'm not surprised to see tea, since tea is one of my love notes but I almost never actually notice it outright on first sniff.

 

This one is just really soft and warm. Hard to pick out individual notes. Faintly reminiscent of Dorian, but softer and without the lemon. Love everything about this one - it's one of my daily go-to scents if I can't figure out what else to wear because it's a very quiet skin scent.

[Circaea]

Licorice tea and leather. Something spicy in it too, that smells like pepper to me. I'm kind of wishing the licorice was clove. Clovey leather and tea would be so awesome. Something in it reminds me of my bottle of White Rabbit, after the grassy notes faded and all I could smell was pepper, linen and tea.

[Aviatrix]

This one is really pretty. It opens up with a blast of spice and lemoniness that could either be from the tea note or the amber. Labdanum sometimes goes strange on me, so I was a little wary at first, but it turned out absolutely beautiful, so all was good!

It fairly quickly settles into a very skin-close, leathery, resinous scent with that little touch of freshness from the tea.

 

The comparisons to Dorian are not too far off; at least both Dorian and Tarasque have the same kind of warm vibe.

 

I am very pleased with my bottle

[milo]

Fresh, minty and fades to practically nothing, but while it lasts, it reminds me a lot of Gennivre, a honey tea that's just barely there.

[theseagrows]

this starts off with something slightly musty and animalic (what?) mixed with ambery tea. then i get the liquidambar and labdanum coming in, and thankfully that first odd mustiness dies off quickly! the leather in this is pretty subtle. i don't really sense it too much honestly, so it may just be a subtle supporting note way in the background. it's mostly a warm, golden tea scent with a hint of something a bit oily, for lack of a better word. it's a nice scent! it just doesn't have a lot of throw on me.

[angelamaria]

In bottle: well, definitely spiced tea. It smells anise-y to me, which brings the Chinese medicine shop to mind. Not quite something I would like to smell like. I'm trying to get the other notes, but the anise gets in the way for me. Am I going to regret skin-testing this?

Wet on skin: At first the anise went away, but it came back. I can smell cinnamon now, too, which helps balance out the anise a bit. I wish I could get the leather or labdanum notes, but I can't.

Dry: this has morphed into an anise and friends scent dry on my skin. It's not quite as bad as medicine-shop-anise, thankfully; the rest of the spices come into play, and perhaps I'm getting a bit more of the lavender and labdanum -- there is an almost creamy undertone to it now.

Verdict this blend is certainly something that comes out of the Phoenix Steamworks line, and super interesting to smell, but alas, not for me to wear. Surprisingly better than what I expected based on the anise, though!