Icefall Pineward 2021

Even though I already really like the Pineward scents, I was quite skeptical and a bit biased when reading the fragrance pyramid for Icefall.
I’m not particularly fond of fresh scents, even less of fruity ones, and least of all of citrus notes in fragrances or fragrances in general.
Of course, I still wanted to test it.

And I was quite surprised and somehow taken with it during the test.
I found it primarily interesting to totally quirky.
And at the start, grapefruit hits you hard.
I will get to that in the description further down.
The sample was now empty, and the scent wouldn’t leave my mind.
In short: the bottle has now moved in with me.
And, as it often is with good friendships: despite the initial sympathy, we took a while to really get to know each other. Now it’s finally there and solidified, the sense of belonging.

Having mentioned that the name is great and somehow fits like a glove, I’ll attempt to describe the scent.

Icefall opens with a surge of a mix of juicy and icy cold, almost frozen grapefruit. Totally authentic, bitter-sweet fruity and invigorating.
Alongside somewhat sharp-herbaceous essences in the background, the grapefruit note clearly dominates the first few minutes on my skin. It eventually balances out so that the peppery herbs push forward. The point at which the scent somehow gains another layer of quirkiness. But from here on, it also becomes really interesting.

And from this point on, I’m glad that the grapefruit is now somehow well embedded in its surroundings, making it primarily interesting rather than annoying.
Due to my aversion to fruits in fragrances, this was my concern with Icefall.

After the midsection just described, the grapefruit is completely infused with spicy-peppery herbal juices and a light, cold mist. There’s also something woody that is indeed meant to be both “woody” and in reference to Euphorium Brooklyn’s WALD.
Until the end of the fragrance development, the hint of a long-lost memory of a frozen grapefruit gently flashes through now and then. So subtle that you can hardly notice it.

The drydown impresses on my skin with a nuance that was missing until then, namely one that is very close to the basil note from Vert D’encens. I simply suspect that this is due to the interplay with the other nuances and is somewhat in the direction of seaweed. Moreover, the “basil” here also appears significantly wetter and cooler. This lays, for me quite dominantly like a blanket over the remaining almost (Maruyama-) spicy ice-herb forest.
And it is exactly here, at the end of the fragrance journey, that I find the true and previously hidden strength of Icefall.

A journey that begins with peppery-fresh winter grapefruit and ends in the icy herb forest, right by the frozen lake.