Vânira Moorea Berdoues 2016

For a long time, I have been searching for the perfect vanilla-citrus scent. Vanîra Moorea ranks very high on my list of favorites. For summer, this fragrance is a bit too heavy for me, although that is precisely what I appreciate about it: a distinctly noticeable sillage and a long-lasting presence through a full, rounded scent. I find it extraordinarily beautiful because it wonderfully promises summer and allows me to dream of it for a long time - it is, so to speak, my summer extender. The fantastic balance of the citrus notes and vanilla is breathtakingly beautiful and very sophisticated. Although it has a gourmand-like quality, this is not a gelateria perfume. Nothing about it is Italian-light, I would say; Vanîra Moorea lacks the sweet-sour zest one would typically expect from the citrus-vanilla combination.

Instead, the fragrance, as I have already mentioned, is very rounded and deep, almost dark. Petitgrain brings a barely perceptible bitterness, and the orange is interpreted in a significantly more bitter and less sweet manner than might be expected. The highlight, however, is the fusion with the vanilla, a dark, deep, and floral-fine vanilla that takes up a lot of space without appearing even remotely gourmand. It appears precious and heavy in this perfume, like a dark pod with deep spice.

The scent accompanies one for a very long time, and one perceives it all the time as something extraordinarily precious and wonderful, as deliciously precious as the vanilla pod said to originate from the Pacific island of Mo'orea. The thought of Mo'orea awakens wanderlust; which island could better embody the South Sea cliché than it? Who could tear themselves away from its white beaches, blue skies, and sparkling bays?

This must have been how Gauguin felt, who did not want to leave the South Sea islands. His rugged-looking, sun-kissed Polynesian women are not delicate, fragile island beauties, just as the vanilla in Vanîra Moorea is not a bright, sweet, flat vanilla. Gauguin's Tahitian women are fleshy and plump, yet adorned with flowers and bathed in pink light. They remind me of the Tahiti vanilla used in Vanîra Moorea: presumably a cross between spice and Guadeloupe vanilla, it enjoys the status of its own identity reserved for the South Sea. It is rarely used in the kitchen, as its flavor deviates significantly from the spice vanilla we know. However, it unfolds an incomparably greater olfactory potential; it is famous primarily for its aromatic richness, less vanilla-like, but more floral and full of enchanting scent notes, especially variations of anise.

Thus, the rich, floral spice of Vanîra Moorea gifts me with the most beautiful associations of perhaps the most beautiful South Sea island: its green rainforest mountain range with Mont Rotui as an impassable, mysterious destination, its deep blue sea, the snow-white sand - a South Sea dream unfolds before my inner eye. To stumble upon real vanilla pods in the rainforest and capture them in situ, to swim with the whales, gazing over Opunohu Bay while enjoying freshly pressed pineapple juice or fresh coconut - that is the little piece of happiness that I may never reach. But I can evoke it and almost physically feel it when I wear Vanîra Moorea.