Gourmand Bottega Profumiera 2013

With our children, we can now manage a tight city program. From the hotel to Notre Dame, then over to Ile Saint-Louis and Boulevard Henri IV to Place de la Bastille, from there to the Picasso Museum on Rue de Thorigny and (with a detour past the Sens Unique perfumery…) back to the hotel. All on foot, of course, and at a brisk pace. That’s a march of - including sightseeing back and forth - a good seven kilometers, which the two of them handled easily. For a ten-year-old boy, that’s quite an achievement.

Of course, one can tire and bore him, but one just needs to come up with something else for that: About twenty branches of the already-named quintessentially British retailer Marks & Spencer can be found in Paris, one even in the retail heart, right on Avenue des Champs-Élysées. And there, my two ladies began to browse and try on with great persistence. How I envied my son! For while I was managing to muster the occasional faint smile or shake of the head in a distant half-sleep, the boy simply curled up on one of the wide chairs in front of the fitting rooms like a cat and fell asleep. Deep and sound - wrinkles included.

Surprisingly, he is now quite engaged in perfumeries, yes, he sometimes shows genuine interest. In particular, he is taken with vanilla scents (and this provides a family bonding approach for good sales staff!). That’s why I brought two vanilla fragrance samples for him from the small perfumery Sens Unique, one a “light” and the other a “dark” variant. “Gourmand” was introduced to me as the dark one.

Accurately so. More caramel than vanilla. Creamy giant toffee candies with a slightly liqueur-like twist. Without, however, coming off as drunk. A bit of dark wood adds a bitter twist and counters the sweetness. Coconut can be sensed, though I probably wouldn’t have recognized it without being told. It remains pleasantly understated. Soon, dusty resin definitively banishes the risk of turning into a walking candy.

Throughout the morning, a fruity note joins the caramel base, which cannot be sufficiently explained by coconut. Mild dried fruit fits better. Perhaps apricot. Either way, this hint of fruit and especially the associated acidity provide another extraordinarily pleasant counterpoint alongside the aforementioned dust.

That’s basically it. What is crucial (for me) going forward is what does not happen: The scent develops, to my great delight, no H-cream ambitions whatsoever. Caramel and vanilla remain consistently fine and tasty, only gradually fading as the evening approaches. A great tip for gourmand lovers.

PS: The light variant was bottled for me as “Vanilla” from 1907. See there.