Trompette 8 Filippo Sorcinelli 2023

Close your eyes and imagine yourself as the cook and housekeeper for a small Catholic parish somewhere in Mexico. The rectory is attached to the church, and as 11:00 AM Mass is going on, you're preparing lunch for the padre, leaving the doors open so that you can hear the service. The smell of burning incense resins mingles with the heat from the chili peppers you just sliced and the black pepper you just cracked. The cedarwood beams framing the old building creak as the organ plays, and you catch that dry, almost medicinal smell mingling with the leather facets of the missalette you're using to follow along when you can.

On my skin, this starts out with rich, resinous olibanum and labdanum, leather, and smoke. Then, the heat of chili pepper sneaks in—that sharp capsaicin note pairs beautifully with the tree resins, serving as a delightful adjunct and an unexpected twist. Finally, the frankincense stays to mingle with dry cedar notes, ending in that glorious, lasting marriage of labdanum and frankincense.

The Vibe Chart

Vibe: Sacred culinary warmth; an atmospheric blend of church incense, cracked spices, and old leather hymnals.

Serendipitously Me: The unexpected kick of sliced chili pepper cutting through a heavy, meditative frankincense is exactly the kind of challenging, artistic twist I live for.

Status: Empty sample (Sadly discontinued)

Yours in fragrant living — Tony

Tropmette 8 is pure art. The Sorcinelli experience, in its multi-layeredness and sensuality, is akin to experiencing a brilliant musical composition or painting. Even the bottle cleverly states: “extrait de musique,” the essence of music. Original and imagination-triggering.

My first impression came from the perfume’s appearance. A majestic, icy-silver, roughly 30 cm tall hard case, inside which is hidden a roughly hewn column of matte black wood. And inside that, a smoked-glass bottle with a powerful white cap imitating an organ register button. Stunning. Reminds me of black Monolith from Stanley Kubrick`s Space Odyssey. The perfect design element for a contemporary minimalist interior.

The scent is not overly complex—by Sorcinelli standards, it’s rather light. Peppery incense with sweet resin. There’s sharpness to it, but it settles into a pleasantly rounded, semi-sweet resinousness. The cardinal’s robe is not extravagantly decorated—rather than baroque ritual pomp, there’s a touch of everyday churchliness here. Honest and sensitive.

Thinking of the Notre Dame organ, from whose registers this series is inspired, I sense a mix of woody and metallic tones. A soulful cloud of sound under Gothic vaults.

This is a fragrance that is not just a utilitarian object—owning it brings much to the soul.

Light gray flows through the leaded glass windows onto the high pipes of the tongue registers, like narrow beams of light from a sharp hatching. Their cool sound swirls the waves of incense over the mouths. Their bodies of tin let notes shine, the deeper labdanum touches become waves of bright overtones that waft through damp spices and hesperides in the old walls, condensing into light spots on the cedar church benches. The note heads are resin pots with flags made of pepper veils. Your eyes close over your fingers to breathe in the scent of their sounds.
**
That the multitalented Filippo Sorcinelli came into the world of fragrances through his training in sacred music and tailoring vestments for Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI is evident not least in his Unum series, which was originally designed to scent church vestments, as well as his Extrait de Musique series, which focuses on the various organ registers.
"Trompette 8" is dedicated to one of the oldest registers. This register has a particularly clear and distinctive sound due to the tin alloy of its high pipes (see also the image I uploaded). As the name suggests, it is meant to imitate a trumpet. In fact, the pyramid reads as if one would want to play the keys from left to right, starting with the deeper notes, gliding sharply and clearly edged by the spices to the higher tones.
Thus, the scale begins here with sharply spicy bright gray from black pepper, in whose damp shimmer distinct chili notes are perceivable, making the underlying labdanum appear more like a brown tint of old leaded glass windows, with sweetness skillfully balanced. The incense also appears bright and cool, dominating from start to finish, not least due to the citrusy influence of elemi. The bergamot also increasingly contributes to this. The cedar is subtle, appearing blue and cool, and is noticeable in the base alongside the slightly spicier pink pepper.
This comes across as consistently harmonious, cool-hesperidic-resinous, spicy, and only subtly smoky. However, it does not have the penetrating power of a trumpet register; the scent remains rather moderate to skin-close for me and lasts only a few hours, which I truly appreciate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=IdoaLxK2-M4