Somersol Havenhollow 2024

So here’s what I learned last summer: Always add grated apple slices to your breakfast cereals. Never forget the way to the grain fields. Never lose sight of the horizons, not the haze of vanilla-colored clouds, nor the shimmering air made of coconut crystals, roasted over distant fires. Always have enough straw for a bed. Iris-blossom cocoa for a sweet thought and a dream path made of sandalwood cream. And sepia-brown memories of whale songs on soft beaches developed on tobacco-leaf-textured photo paper. Never miss the last day of summer. Never forget the scent of July. That’s it.
(Freely adapted from Shaun Tan)
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Originally from New England, Eric Valentino incorporates all the impressions he has gathered during his numerous journeys across the diverse natural landscapes of North America into his fragrances, which are crafted from rare tinctures, oils, extracts, and absolutes. All of his creations are highly personal and strictly limited-edition olfactory representations of these rural idylls.
Valentino’s olfactory interpretation of summer grain fields, “Somersol,” begins with a wonderfully fruity (apple) accord of Massio bark (fruity, creamy, sweet and coconut-milky), woodruff (lily of the valley), and various grains (barley, bran), supported by a roasted-sounding coconut and sweetened with vanilla-like benzoin. This evokes very pleasant, cozy associations for me of a breakfast fruit muesli with a dollop of honey, before the scene expands and becomes drier: hay baking in golden-yellow fields, vanilla and creamy, twelve-year-aged sandalwood thickening the horizon to a milky white, and iris and cocoa expanding the sweet nuance to include white chocolate. A hint of salty, but above all light, tobacco notes from amber further deepen this summery sense of comfort in the base, as if one were immersed in an idealized memory of a summer day from childhood—a wonderfully romanticized dream, rounded, balanced, multi-layered, and rich in nuances to be rediscovered time and again.