Top Notes 
Geranium
Lily
Neroli
Rose
Violet
Heart Notes 
Musk
Patchouli
Resins
Sandalwood
Base Notes 
Hay
Sage
Vetiver05/23/2025
ClaireV
731 Reviews
ClaireV
1
Extraordinary hay chypre
Sballo means ‘trip’ in Italian. Not as in a ‘trip to the seaside’, but in the ‘I ate some funny-looking mushrooms and now your face is a rainbow’ sense of the word. Which is appropriate when you consider how mind-bendingly seventies the Acampora oils smell. Trippy, psychedelic, groovy – all words that fit the Acampora aesthetic like a glove.
Sballo is the banner-carrier for this seventies feel, so it goes heavy on the aromatics, hay, patchouli, and oakmoss. It ain’t pretty, but it sure does smell authentic. The main thrust is a patchouli-rose chypre in the Bernard Chant style. Think Aromatics Elixir and Aramis 900, but richer and rougher in texture. An artisanal, homemade take on a commercial model. The rose is brilliant and red, but smothered by armfuls of dry, rustic grasses and hay note acting in tandem with oakmoss and patchouli.
Most modern chypre scents fake the bitterness of oakmoss in the traditional chypre accord via other materials that share a similarly ashen dryness, like denatured patchouli aromachemicals (Akigalawood), hay, galbanum, or even saffron. But though there is no oakmoss listed for Sballo, I can’t imagine that it doesn’t actually contain at least some. To my nose, the shadowy dankness of the material is unmistakably present.
Sballo shores up this oakmoss effect by flanking it with equally dank or earthy-dry materials such as hay, clove, patchouli, and a material that smells like tobacco or black tea leaves. The overall effect is gloomy and desiccated in the grand rose chypre tradition. Saving it from a classic ‘ladies who lunch’ formality of the chypre is the rough, almost burnt-ashy texture of the moss and patchouli. It is like the rough, stubbled jaw of a brutish male thrust into your personal airspace, causing both discomfort and the thrill of secret excitement.
Sballo is the banner-carrier for this seventies feel, so it goes heavy on the aromatics, hay, patchouli, and oakmoss. It ain’t pretty, but it sure does smell authentic. The main thrust is a patchouli-rose chypre in the Bernard Chant style. Think Aromatics Elixir and Aramis 900, but richer and rougher in texture. An artisanal, homemade take on a commercial model. The rose is brilliant and red, but smothered by armfuls of dry, rustic grasses and hay note acting in tandem with oakmoss and patchouli.
Most modern chypre scents fake the bitterness of oakmoss in the traditional chypre accord via other materials that share a similarly ashen dryness, like denatured patchouli aromachemicals (Akigalawood), hay, galbanum, or even saffron. But though there is no oakmoss listed for Sballo, I can’t imagine that it doesn’t actually contain at least some. To my nose, the shadowy dankness of the material is unmistakably present.
Sballo shores up this oakmoss effect by flanking it with equally dank or earthy-dry materials such as hay, clove, patchouli, and a material that smells like tobacco or black tea leaves. The overall effect is gloomy and desiccated in the grand rose chypre tradition. Saving it from a classic ‘ladies who lunch’ formality of the chypre is the rough, almost burnt-ashy texture of the moss and patchouli. It is like the rough, stubbled jaw of a brutish male thrust into your personal airspace, causing both discomfort and the thrill of secret excitement.
