Marron Chic Nez à Nez

Chocolate! Creamy, milky, whole milk. With gianduja nougat or creamy truffle, Tartufo Bianco, oh my God, filled with buttercream, mmmmh, caramel-like, Belgian pralines, butter ganache,…
…I love light chocolate. Sometimes I feel a bit of envy towards the connoisseurs who dismiss such milk chocolate pleasure with a raised eyebrow and only start enjoying once the cocoa content reaches a decent high percentage. Good chocolaterie chocolate must offer sensory experiences of similar dimensions to what good fragrances provide for trained noses. But personally, I only get carried away in rapture when my chocolate is light and milky.
However, it’s quite different when it comes to smelling instead of tasting. In this intersection of chocolatey scent, I prefer the exact opposite direction: If a chocolate fragrance is too milky-sweet, my enjoyment is limited. Accordingly, I sniffed at Marron Chic with a skeptical attitude.
What a revelation: Dark chocolate!
Very delicious, completely on the olfactory level, without the culinary-tasting delicious associations. Deep, rich, refined, dark, dark, dark, yet very feminine, with a beautiful, light winter sweetness and quite sexy, without giving away the cuddle factor.

It starts with a very flirty bitter orange note. But not classically bitter orange, which can quickly become subdued and dull, but with a sour-fruity kick and a mandarin-like sweet spritz. When I read up and learned about the kumquat fruit, I could clearly connect this impression. Very soon, the wonderful dark chocolate comes along the path that the kumquat has paved. Do you know the taste that a bite into a roasted, otherwise untreated cocoa bean gives? Unsweetened, pure cocoa flavor with a certain powdery dullness. That’s exactly what I smell in Marron Chic. This powdery dullness corresponds olfactorily to the powderiness of iris, which works wonderfully with the main note here.
Just as I immerse myself in this non-milk chocolate cocoa, a lovely, sweet, incredibly harmonious floral note joins in. The kumquat-orange-citrus recedes into the background and is replaced by the violet. A perfectly nice violet, as one can only imagine. A very beautiful counterpoint: To the exalted, dark, and noble erotic cocoa note comes an almost touching cuteness.
The base doesn’t bring any truly new chapter to this fragrance story. It deepens what has already developed and emphasizes its unfolding, bringing as the only novelty for my nose a bit of sunny straw. Very successful: They left out the vanilla here. Instead, there are woody planks that wonderfully support without mixing in any new sweetness.
This fragrance is a precious praline. A dark one, with a high cocoa content and without buttery-creamy sweetness.