American Pharaoh II Folkwinds 2024

Life is sometimes lonely out here. The sun runs red like dead cherries before the entrance to the tent into the night, staggering day-drunk like port wine over the steppes, flowing down from the rocks like from pyramids, shimmering like ghosts in the smoke over distant fires, which wilt cool like roses on the horizon. They soon whisper sweet animal trails that still crawl warmly over the floors over thin cocoa-dusty layers. There are salt edges of long-dried lakes, endless weavings of cedar fibers that smolder gently like peat into the vastness, where Virginia tobacco leaves wither, the spicy-archaic, raw, rotten, still soaked with fermented fruits, intoxicated by the scent of the prairie.
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The label Folkwinds, founded by Jono Bornstein in 2022, primarily uses natural raw materials from America to capture the scent landscapes of North America. This seems to be succeeding better and better. While the first version of "American Pharao" appeared less refined and rounded despite high-quality materials, I perceive the second version as much more delicate and balanced.
A red thread runs through the fragrance from beginning to end, the cherry wine, subtly sweet and boozy like a slightly less sweet port wine, lightly smoky with spicy Virginia tobacco leaf in the background at the start. The Damask rose initially emphasizes the acidity of the wine, before the various types of musk (Abelmoschus, deer musk, musk) become noticeable beneath it, sweetly animalistic, warm, and bitter, providing depth. The sweetness of the musk notes is accentuated by a hint of chocolate and vanilla. As time goes on, the Virginia tobacco becomes more pronounced, raw, spicy, and hay-like dry, initially still connected with the slightly salty but clearly tobacco-like amber, before it is replaced by the woody-warm notes of Virginia cedar, creating a slightly peaty-smoky impression with the other notes. Gradually, the cherry wine note becomes more present again, as if it were releasing the tobacco leaf in the end. The thrall of the prairie is rather moderate but persistent in nature.

(With thanks to Schoebksr)