Holy Cross Pineward 2026

Intriguing scent from Pinewards; it doesn't fall into gloomy forest nor bucolic collection, it's different. Lichen and moss are covering this forgotten cross, once a sanctuary, now left to the nature itself. Feels hopeless, somehow, like someone once went there to pray and now there is no trace of them anymore. The woody notes smell almost wet, and the coldness of the stone is still in there. Not my fave Pineward, but intriguing nonetheless.

I've smelled scents that smelled like damp stone, and I've smelled scents that smelled like dry incense. Holy Cross take the middle ground: it smells like dry stone walls of an abandoned church or a temple, overgrown with lichen. If you lean in close, you can still catch a whiff of incense permeating these long forgotten walls, carrying the fading memories of former rituals of worship that have taken place here, long time ago. But mostly, it just smells like dry stone, incense, and lichen.

Foggy, Grey, crisp, Snappy, ever so slightly smokey. Absolutely beautiful fragrance. a masterpiece.

A lightly smokey musk with a botanical backbone to ground it. Blended expertly. Ghostlike, Sheer, Waking up on a foggy spring morning after camping on a mountainside. The only thing you hear is the wind, the birds, and the water in the creek bed. Dry's down to something akin to juniper and cedarwood.

Comparable to L'Orpheline by Lutens and Wash Me in the Water by 4160 Tuesday. Not the same. Both of these are heavy on the Olibanum. Heady like incense. Holy Cross on the other hand is alive. Not the resin from a tree but the tree itself.

Unfortunately it only lasts 3-4 hours at most on my skin and its gone. But those fleeting hours are lovely.

Smoky, woody pine; deeply reminiscent of the sort of pyrrhic alpine forests you hike through along the Continental Divide. While this was specifically inspired by the Holy Cross Wilderness near Gilman, CO, it's a scent that evokes memories of wild places that extend to central Wyoming and down into northern New Mexico before it transitions into the mountainous deserts approaching Albuquerque - a part of the US many know as god's country.

It smells like dry, high altitude mountain air, trail dust, the sun-baked mineral salt deposits on rocks, and the burnt remnants of forest fires' past. But it also smells of the life that persists and returns after those fires - juniper, pinyon bark, sage brush, scrub oak, lichens, and, very, very faintly, the sorts of mildly perfumed flowers that you may smell standing in the shadow of a pine forest abutting a mountain meadow.

Performance is appropriate for an EDT, about 5-6 hours with moderate projection and not overwhelming; a very atmospheric scent.

I love this fragrance because I don't live in Colorado anymore, and this reminds me so much of one very specific place (not Holy Cross, though) I hiked that I still want to go back to. Most of Pineward's forest catalog are niche bottled memories for people like me who spent a lot of time outdoors in the Mountain West time zone and if that's you as well, you'll enjoy this.

I haven't been to the specific region that inspired Holy Cross, but I have been fortunate enough to spend time in other alpine areas where juniper grows wild and sprawls across the mountainsides, heedless of the stony soil and cold, thin air -- and oh, does this fragrance ever do justice to what an incredible experience it can be to breathe the same air, to see the same plants stubbornly thriving amidst the same stone, and to merely exist there for a while.

The mineral notes are what struck me first, not unlike the way you might see a mountain towering from a distance, and perceive little else but the sheer imposing mass of its stony facade. Compelling in its own right, it's beautifully evocative of high altitude air, in a sense not only unique (at least to me) as an accord but genuinely impressive in how easily it conjures impressions of rough, exposed stone and jagged mountain crags. I've encountered plenty of air or salt renderings in perfume, or even dust or concrete or crumbling brick, but Holy Cross is the first perfume that's ever made me instantly think of stone in this particular context, to the point where it feels memorable for that alone.

Along with pine and damp, misty greens, juniper is the other essential part of this journey, and the longer I sat with the fragrance, the clearer they all became -- much like, to borrow from the example above, seeing the same mountain but from a much closer vantage. The juniper here particularly stands out to me, and similarly to how stone is rendered, it's in a way unlike I've seen it depicted before. Every other juniper-forward scent I've ever tried presents it more like you'd find it in gin (think Pineward's own Juniperus, for instance), rendered light and pleasant and even a little sweet, and focuses on the fragrant berries. In Holy Cross, much like its persistent little needles that can and will snag on your pants and even cling to the fabric as you try and pass by, juniper doesn't let you forget that it is not merely a flavor. It is an entire plant, and an evergreen at that, capable of not only surviving but flourishing upon rugged, breathtaking, and harsh mountainsides. The mineral accord doesn't disappear in the least, and the pine and wildflowers and windswept vegetation are unforgettable parts of the vista too, but it's the humble, tenacious juniper that stays with me the longest, and I can't help but love it all the more for its dogged perseverance.

Much like the austere splendor of the mountains to which the scent pays homage, I found Holy Cross to be a fragrance that all but demanded my awe and my respect, stirring my soul in a sense far more sublime than classically beautiful. But more importantly, my time spent with it was deeply rewarding, and it is a scent I will think about for a long, long time after my first spray.