Blog post by Gwen
Baume du Doge - opulent and rich and surprisingly light
Photo: perfumeniche,
A few years ago, a close friend rented an apartment on the top floor of a building in San Polo, the oldest sestieri in Venice, for a month and invited us to join him there for a couple of weeks.
Near our apartment was Antica Drogheria Mascari. It’s one of Venice's oldest specialty food stores and the last surviving spice store on Calle degli Spezieri (Street of the Spice Merchants). I’ve spent hours in this place. The teas, wines, oils and sweets are spectacular, but they were all overshadowed by the spices. Their scent was so potent that by the second day, I could find the shop by smell.Every spice on the planet seemed to be displayed in big glass jars or pyramid-shaped mounds on huge platters in the window. They were a visual reminder to passersby of Venice’s powerful maritime past when merchants brought spices, silks, and incense from the Far East to this hustling port city to trade, making Venice the portal between the East and the West.
This is the Venice brought to life in Baume du Doge by Eau d`Italie, the Italian indie perfume line that explores the landscapes and history of Italian regions and cities through fragrance.
Baume du Doge opens with a note of sweet, luscious orange warmed by spicy cinnamon and woody, camphouous cardamom. Wild fennel is softly spicy and links to the cinnamon and cardamom and brings an herbal anisic freshness to the top notes. The notes mingle and blend and smell like an herbal tea – light and comforting. As it blooms, a rich, resinous, smoky note of frankincense comes up through the top notes, warmed by peppery saffron and checked by bitter myrrh. Spicy, peppery clove mirrors the frankincense with its smokiness. At the base, woody, earthy, balsamic vetiver root comes into play along with sweet, warm benzoin and the combination is perfectly proportioned. Vanilla is rich, creamy and caramel-like. It softens the spices and mellows out any sharpness so that Baume du Doge smells dry, woody and camphourous – to my nose it smells like the wooden boxes they used for shipping spices and herbs from the far East, and I am taken aback by its beauty every time I get a whiff of it.
Despite all the heavy hitters in the list of notes for Baume du Doge the dry-down is opulent, rich and surprisingly light.
That list of notes tells the story: oranges, so common now, we forget they originated in Southeast Asia and were introduced to Europe in the late 15th century; clove so highly valued that London dockworkers in the 16th century were paid their bonuses in them; frankincense and myrrh so critical to making perfume and incense that their trees were seen as a source of wealth by Arab rulers. Spices, roots and herbs from the Middle East, so rare, so exotic, so fragrant, their aroma scented the air of medieval Venice. This is what Baume du Doge smells like.
Check out Baume du Doge in our Shop.