Essences - Naga Mantra N•O•A•M 2023

It was nothing more than a rustling in the dry lemongrass that I heard. A slight dizziness, a pulling at the temples in the glaring light.
If only I knew how it had come about ...
Then there was nothing but the scent of galangal by the waterfall. Lavender blue clouds, broken by the citrus glow of distant sunbeams, the dance of colorful prisms in the haze. Exhausted, I let my heavy limbs sink down next to the osmanthus bushes, my fingers glide pensively through the water of the pond, a murmur in my ear, a sweet buzzing as greenish shimmering adders curl around my arms. My senses fade for a heartbeat, blurred images as I look up, a slender leathery body making serpentine waves. The tuberose blossom in my hand. A flash in immortal yellow eyes as the hissing of the reptilian tongue forms itself into words.
"I can suck the poison from your veins, make the pain go away, heal you."
And so I let it happen. Maple sweetness lies on my tongue while the snake skin closes around my limbs, a world sinks into brittle darkness until my snake eyes are reflected in the calm water.

***

N.O.A.M. - short for New Oceans And Meridians - takes you to foreign worlds with its fragrances, invites you to travel through time and space and knows how to tell impressive stories. All the fragrances I have had the pleasure of getting to know so far are complex and original and I think I can smell the heart and soul that goes into them. In addition to the program designed for reissue, the small Swiss manufactory also offers fragrances with the "Essences", which include Naga Mantra, that contain particularly rare and/or expensive raw materials, which naturally reduces production to a small number of hand-picked bottles.
Naga Mantra opens with an incomparable top note of bergamot, galangal and lemongrass under which minty camphor notes shimmer greenish, which are contrasted by herbaceous lavender on some days and not on others. As the top notes fade, the fragrance reveals a triad of ethereal, tea-like osmanthus blossoms with tuberose, spicy hay and brittle dark woods. In this phase, the fragrance is a little unpredictable, sometimes allowing the floral aspects to become more prominent, with the osmanthus revealing increasingly pronounced leather facets as it progresses, or playing the hay to the fore with the maple syrup accents of immortelle and fenugreek. However, herbaceous greenery always pervades the fragrance like a slithering snake.
In the base, the interplay of notes calms down again, blending into a warm timbre of light tobacco, leather notes and dry dark woods, sweetened by coumarin.
It is precisely this coumarin in combination with the woods that curbs my euphoria a little. What is often described as slightly sweet and creamy is unfortunately always a bit scratchy and sticky to my nose, but I am of course aware that this is complaining on an extremely high level and a very subjective feeling that says more about my nose than about the quality of this extraordinary fragrance.

Thank you very much for the sample, dear Floyd. I think the snake mantra hypnotized me a bit.