The Merchant Of Venice
The Merchant Of Venice
162 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The salted caramel immediately announces itself with a crystalline sharpness, caught between sweet and savoury, whilst dried fruits dust the opening with an almost tobacco-like warmth. Within minutes, the frankincense begins its creep, transforming the sweetness into something amber-tinged and smoky, already pulling the composition away from gourmand predictability.
The Somalian frankincense fully emerges now, asserting its resinous, slightly medicinal presence over the caramel foundation. Blond woods thread through—dry, slightly spiced, with a subtle woodsmoke quality—creating a complex interplay where nothing quite settles into comfort. The cocoa begins surfacing as background earthiness, grounding the increasingly incense-forward narrative.
Cocoa absolute deepens into burnt, almost ashy territory, merging seamlessly with the woods and lingering frankincense smoke. What remains is a quiet, introspective base—more smouldering ashes than active flame—where the salt-sweet opening feels like a distant memory and smoky resin becomes the entire story.
Mystic Incense arrives as a deliberate contradiction: a fragrance that wraps sweetness in smoke and refuses to apologise for either impulse. The opening salted caramel note carries genuine minerality—that briny, almost umami quality that prevents the sweetness from becoming cloying—whilst dried fruits (likely fig or date) add a dusty, almost leathery complexity beneath. What distinguishes this from conventional gourmand territory is the Somalian frankincense in the heart, which brings authentic resin-smoke rather than fuzzy church-like abstraction. This frankincense doesn't soften around the caramel; instead, it sharpens it, creating a push-pull dynamic where the resin's bitterness plays against caramel's indulgence.
The blond woods—likely cedarwood or similar pale variants—maintain an arid, almost desiccated quality, preventing the composition from ever feeling plush or cosy. There's something architectural about this fragrance's bones. The cocoa absolute in the base doesn't arrive as chocolate comfort; paired with all this smoking wood and resin, it reads more as bitter earth and burnt terroir than dessert.
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3.9/5 (193)