Melograno Santa Maria Novella 1965 Eau de Cologne

What a surprise: Santa Maria Novella MELOGRANO is a glorious green chypre! The green is so intense as to be almost galbanum-like. The oakmoss is also quite detectable. Despite the name, what is not readily evident is the pomegranate. I've spent some time with my nose to my wrist attempting to find the pomegranate, but my commitment to truth in reviewing obliges me to confess that I cannot tease out any pomegranate from the intense chypre elements of this perfume.

Maybe I could imagine pomegranate as detectable here, if I really, really tried, but I would never, ever, have guessed that it was present in a mystery scent vial trial. No, this is unequivocally a green chypre! It may as well be called grapefruit or banana or cherry or melon--all would be every bit as appropriate as pomegranate, it seems.

But enough about the name. This smells great! I definitely recommend MELOGRANO for testing by anyone who loves classic chypres. People who are looking for an intensely red-pomegranate-stained perfume may, on the other hand, be disappointed.

Melograno (Pomegranate) is by far and away the bestselling fragrance in the Santa Maria Novella line-up, a fact that surprises me every time I smell it. It's not so much that it's an odd fragrance (although it is) but that it's extremely hard to pin down.

If you read the reviews for Melograno, you will see that it seems to be a different fragrance from one wearer to the next - to some, it is a green chypre along the lines of Givenchy III, to others it is the edgier twin of the grandest aldehydic monster ever created, Chanel No. 22, and to yet others, it is nothing more than detergent soap made into a fragrance. The one thing that everybody agrees upon is that it doesn't smell like pomegranates. Perhaps Melograno is successful because it is so dependent on the individual skin chemistry and scent memories of each wearer, and is therefore the olfactory equivalent of a mood ring.

For what it's worth, to me it smells like a mixture of aldehydes, green flowers, luxury soap, and church incense, with a faint but stirring note of urinal puck running through the base. Why this odd mish mash of elements should work is beyond me, but without doubt, the end result is resolutely appealing. What it will smell on you, and whether you'll like it, is anyone's guess.

My first encounter with SMN Melograno was through a visit to Pickwick's Mercantile in Portsmouth NH, where a sales assistant suggested I smell the finely milled soap bar. I was immediately enamored and bought it on the spot, radiantly aldehydic and mossy, evoking only the tartness of pomegranate arils and no sweetness. I relished that bar of soap and just knew that I had to have the cologne itself one day.

Now, with it in my posession, I am just as smitten. The heart of the scent is hawthorn blossoms dusted with orris powder. Melograno's moss note is testament to the fact that the oakmoss, just as sandalwood and civet, continues to live on in perfumery through exceptional reconstructions as this bottle certainly was produced after heavy restrictions were put into place. I imagine vetiver and patchouli in the base certainly helps, but its just ravishing. Likewise, opoponax, also recently restricted, is really apparent to my nose through its dry down, bittersweet, dry, almost toffee-like. Soapy, sure, yet transcending the soap as a full-bodied, glorious chypre.

Smelled this on the back of my hand, wanting to test one perfume at a time (learned my lesson: smelling more than one, can make one judge scents wrongly) and even now I had to be outside to fully appreciate this beauty. Went for a stroll in the city to get to it's drydown and went back to the shop to buy it. I have a newer bottle with gold - instead of green - printed letters, but I've been told it is the same scent.

Though sniffing just the bottle, it reminded me of Liu Eau de Parfum, when using the first spray, it starts of like a soapy chypre, almost in the 'eau de soir' kind of way (but better), but then a breeze will promise there will be a lot more going on. This cologne (which acts like an edt, longevity- and sillage-wise) changes with every second: from slightly aldehydic to chypre-ish to powdery and to end like a scent that carries all these elements in one, changing it's colours like a chameleon, depending on the colour of the mood of the wearer although the more 'chypre character' definitely morfs into something kinder and softer.

Very hard to describe.

The soapyness is not the detergent kind of soapyness, but the more grooming kind. As others have mentioned: Like classic, Italian bars of fine soap.
Would there be a barbershop for women, it would smell like this.
I smell the labdanum very clearly giving this scent some anciënt vibes, not dated but 'hystorical' in a way, would suit a visit to a museum very well :-).
I should smell some pomegranate-seeds (It's been long since I eat those for no reason actually) to be able to tell if I can smell those in here..:-).

This scent is one of it's own for sure. To my nose, this is a scent, a smell, not a perfume-y kind of fragrance despite the good performance and I'm more and more into these kind of scents lately. The ones that are not so much about perfume, but about mood and reminiscing.
Beautyful!

I think this can be worn all year round and for any occasion.

So, I guess I'm the odd one here, because I DO smell pomegranate seeds along with a late summer sunshine and fallen leaves. I bought Melograno Eau de Cologne without really knowing what "melograno" meant, because it reminded me of ordering nar suyu, or freshly squeezed pomegranate juice from the stall next to my little hotel in Istanbul. It certainly has a lot more than the acerbic, sour-sweet little rubies of a freshly peeled pomegranate, but they're unmistakenly present in there, along with a spicy rose. And yes, there's also the aroma of those old European soap bars, the ones that used to be hidden like precious gems in Eastern European homes during the dark years of the Iron Curtain. It has so much nostalgia, I simply couldn't pass it by. This and Pot Pourri are the two Santa Maria Novella colognes that have incredible performance in terms of silage and longevity.