L’AMANDIERE

Green almond. Jasmine. Rose. Tilia.

4/19/15

Green is a color and an image-evoker that has always been close to my heart.  Those connections were fused at a young age.  My last name before I was married was Greenwood, which I was not a fan of as child (I’m sure you can imagine the bevvy of nicknames that school produced), but having shed it over 12 years ago and in retrospect as a woman of a certain age, there is a nostalgia now connected that has associations not only with family, but with the country of my birth.  Americans love it. “Oh, it’s charmingly English,” they screech in delight.  And even while, as the eternal cynic, that cloying optimism gets me muttering under my breath and sets my eyes rolling in my head, I understand they are right. It IS English, and I have fluttered into the realms of fancy myself over thoughts of the Greenwoods of days of yore embarking on historical exploits in the forest; regal attendants to the jaunty rides of kings of old.  Who knows? We could possibly have been cobblers or muck-sweepers too for all I know, but that is utterly unromantic, and I refuse to entertain such an idea!

So green:  verdant, lush, awash with ferns and firs and the sounds, smells and tastes of the woods. It’s a cooling color, for body, mind and soul. While blue is the color that I find the most meditative, it has to be striven for. Green seems a part of my national identity, my genetic makeup, so to speak, so maybe James Heeley being an Englishman himself paved part of his olfactory path in hitting this goal dead on target.  And l’Amandiere is incredible. I don’t know if I really smell the almond in this fragrance as much as the GREEN in the almond.  This is from the immature stage of the almond growth, and in this state they are only available for a very short season in the spring.  So they don’t have that typical almond-y aroma that I also adore and which is a key note in some of my other absolute favorite fragrances.

Smelling this scent is like peering inside one of these tiny little nuts and if you can imagine by putting your eye to the pinprick perforation you enticed into the shell, you may be lucky enough to see the whole of spring encapsulated there. It’s new growth and fresh grass and stalks and the dew on those stalks and fresh rain and dappled sunshine.  No, I am not gone with the fairies.  Please, I implore you, try this and see.  In back of it all is the delicately-sweet swaying of the tiny linden blossoms, together with the cut stems of jasmine and rose; veritable will-o’-the-wisps of floral softness, doing their own little thing off in the background.  This perfume wants to be Green with a capital G, and it just makes that point splendidly, but yet spring flowers provide the checks and balances to ensure it is never harsh, overbearing or too serious.  As an extrait fragrance, it just lasts forever, with the green phasing out eventually like a chalk painting that is slowly subsiding with the tenacity of the day-long spotting rain and then transmuting into a powdery floral that’s perceptible right up against the skin.  Kiss, kiss Mr. Heeley.

Rating. 5 royal rumpuses in the green wood.