From Peach Pie to Salted Caramel
Sarah Baker - Peach’s Revenge. What a lovely, delicious, incredibly comforting peach! It smells surprisingly natural to me, somewhere between a peach and a nectarine, almost fifty-fifty. The opening reminds me of a homemade peach and plum pie. A sweet, juicy peach filling with a thin layer of sliced plums adding this bright, sparkling tartness. Or perhaps it’s the nectarine creating that slightly sour contrast. Either way, it’s wonderful. Everything feels creamy, airy, fruity and softly vanilla-scented. But the vanilla is never cloying. At first, it’s more like powdered sugar dusted over a freshly baked pie, mixed with a little cinnamon. And then there’s cardamom, just one tiny pod of proper, fragrant Indian cardamom, adding the slightest hint of exotic, almost oriental sweetness. Just a microdose, but it makes the whole thing even more delicious. As the fragrance develops, the vanilla becomes thicker, warmer and more syrupy. It gradually turns into something like dark maple syrup, slightly burnt and smoky, with a beautiful caramelised sweetness. And the drydown is absolutely mouthwatering. Thick, smoky vanilla, gently scorched maple syrup and rich, stretchy caramel. Not quite a hard candy yet, but that wonderfully thick, elastic caramel just before it becomes one, when it’s still warm and being pulled and stretched. There’s a tiny pinch of salt, something slightly spicy, and then that lovely cardamom appears again, as though someone had added just a little more to the vanilla. It’s such a cosy, delicious fragrance, and I can imagine it being absolutely perfect in winter, when you want to wrap yourself in something warm and sweet while keeping a little bit of summer with you. I really, really like this one. My only regret is that it doesn’t come in a 30 ml bottle. I would absolutely love to have a little bottle of this delicious peach in my collection.
