 |
| The Hayloft by John William North, 1867 |
"This summer I co-distilled about 10 pounds of hay, bison grass and sweetgrass to create a rough and gorgeous hay/sweetgrass/bison grass concrete, which was then filtered and evaporated to create a rich co-absolute."
Why he went to all of that trouble instead of just using a high-quality coumarin is beyond me, but the result is an unsettling ambrosial effect of dry-nutty and semisweet essences. There's a skanky bit of honey blended closely to a soft lavender note. Both are intertwined with a sort of amaretto (bitter almond liqueur), and something grassy-vanillic, which is probably saffron, if the notes list is anything to go by.
Hayloft's opening is garrulous. Hayloft has a lot to say, or at least it seems to, at first. Eventually its barrage of notes coalesce into a linear accord that smells at once edible and earthy, the kind of weirdness I haven't sniffed since Thierry Mugler set A*Men loose on the world. By the middle of the day, the animalic twang of honey amplifies the sweetness of the saffron to form a Franken-hay more evocative of a Yankee Candle from Hell than anything you'd find in a barn. The balance is off; there's the strange liqueur-like thing vying for attention amidst the din of "hay/sweetgrass/ bison grass concrete co-absolute," and a desperate lavender trying to be heard. Save yourself the money and the migraine, and just get Serge Lutens Chergui instead.