Les Quatre Saisons - L'Hiver Guerlain 2016

In German, it translates to: 'Widerwillen', which is the title of a wonderful poem by the American Robert Frost. In it, he describes the complete silence and - both physical and emotional - emptiness of midwinter and uses this equally as a metaphor for farewell and end, or rather the reluctance to accept the end of something beloved: '...out over the crusted snow - when others are sleeping.' Coldness. Melancholy. Loneliness.

Thierry Wasser arranges the winter scent in Guerlain's highly exclusive seasonal series along the essence of Frost's emblematic poem (even though he likely had a Russian winter in mind and not an American one): still and clear, dignified and yet as sad as it is permeated by the still distant hint of a new beginning. L'Hiver is based on a mineral, almost metallic base note - like the sound of footsteps sinking into the crusted snow. The initial conifer quickly fades beyond the top note, making way for a light white coolness from a surprisingly unpowdery iris and a frankincense so strange and bodiless like the instinctive cry of an invisible crow. There is movement in this scent - just as the echo of the crow's cry gets caught between the black trunks of a winter forest - joined by the cool bitterness of angelica and a distant hint of musk like the breath of a polar bear deep under the snow, trying to protect her cubs from the cold. And something juniper seems to be present - completely without the alcoholic gin accord that many other juniper scents cannot resist. Bitter. And clear.

There are twenty-one copies of Les Quatre Saisons - L'Hiver, in handmade Baccarat bottles, adorned with white swan down and snow owl feathers, available for the price of 16,000 euros exclusively in Paris. Accordingly, hardly anyone will buy this wonderful scent, with which Mr. Wasser provides the final proof that he is capable of creating something extraordinary beyond 'sweet'. A work of art. From the inside and from the outside.

Conclusion, in Robert Frost's final stanza:
'Ah, when to the heart of man
was it ever less than a treason?
To go with the drift of things,
to yield with a grace to reason,
and bow and accept the end -
of a love or a season?'