03/27/2025
Omnipotato
276 Reviews
Omnipotato
Very helpful Review
5
Love and Fear
According to the Orto Parisi website, Boccanera (Italian: “black mouth”) “strikes a confusing balance between scent and flavor, between love and fear.”
I love fragrances that present as an oxymoron, a duality, or an apparent contradiction. One of my favorites of all time is Opus XV - King Blue, which seeks to pit an ultra-sweet mandarin/blackcurrant opening against a barnyardy oud. Here also in Boccanera, we have a contradiction between love and fear, comfort and discomfort, which is represented beautifully through scent.
The opening is a cozy, kind of spicy chocolate. Warm and sweet, it envelops you in a soft embrace. But lurking not long after is a dark vetiver, which is part of a larger earthy accord that makes up the base of the fragrance. Geosmin enters, and gives the effect of rain against wet stone. It’s more leathery and woody than musky, making for a more disconcerting vibe than geosmin usually provides in fragrances. This is definitely not “cozy rainy day,” more “caught out at night alone in a storm.”
While the artistry is neat, as a fragrance, I think it is a bit lacking in complexity (although the chocolate geosmin combination is novel) and kind of one-dimensional. I’ll enjoy wearing my sample but have to think about whether or not it is full bottle worthy.
I love fragrances that present as an oxymoron, a duality, or an apparent contradiction. One of my favorites of all time is Opus XV - King Blue, which seeks to pit an ultra-sweet mandarin/blackcurrant opening against a barnyardy oud. Here also in Boccanera, we have a contradiction between love and fear, comfort and discomfort, which is represented beautifully through scent.
The opening is a cozy, kind of spicy chocolate. Warm and sweet, it envelops you in a soft embrace. But lurking not long after is a dark vetiver, which is part of a larger earthy accord that makes up the base of the fragrance. Geosmin enters, and gives the effect of rain against wet stone. It’s more leathery and woody than musky, making for a more disconcerting vibe than geosmin usually provides in fragrances. This is definitely not “cozy rainy day,” more “caught out at night alone in a storm.”
While the artistry is neat, as a fragrance, I think it is a bit lacking in complexity (although the chocolate geosmin combination is novel) and kind of one-dimensional. I’ll enjoy wearing my sample but have to think about whether or not it is full bottle worthy.
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