Sweet Grass – sweet and warm and nostalgic

Photo: perfumeniche

My neighbour has a patch of sweet grass growing in the corner of his garden, and in late summer and early autumn, its sweet scent wafts over the walkway to my house. I smell it every time I walk out the door, and it always makes me smile when I do. It’s one of those small pleasures I look forward to each year. I’ve searched for a fragrance that smells of true sweet grass for a long time, and I finally found one right in my own backyard: Sweet Grass from indie niche brand Libertine Fragrance, based in Alberta, Canada.

Libertine Fragrance was founded in 2014 by Joshua Smith as a response to the excessively commercial world of high-profile perfume brands. Using quality ingredients, Smith makes his unisex fragrances in small batches, and everything from blending to packaging is done by hand. He’s doing something right because in 2016, Luca Turin raved about the line. He says about Sweet Grass: ‘The most original is the memorably inventive Sweet Grass…. All in all, superb work, the sort that makes keeping a blog like this one worth it.’ I wholeheartedly agree.

Sweet Grass opens with herbal notes of aromatic piney rosemary and sweet, floral-scented lavender. As they fade, they relax into a heart of sweet, smoky hay-like tobacco and herbaceous, honeyed, slightly powdery mimosa. Together, they create the feeling of golden warmth that glows on a base of warm, grassy, sundrenched hay. Tonka bean joins the mix, where its coumarin gives the fragrance its evocative smell of sweet green grass. Oakmoss gives Sweet Grass warmth, richness and refinement.

On me, drydown is aromatic and sweet, warm and nostalgic.

For me, the secret of its beauty lies in its structure. Sweet Grass is an EDP but has the building blocks of a cologne: a mixture of citrus oils, herbs and/or flowers with a light base of woods or musk. It’s not designed to combat summer heat the way colognes do. Instead, it’s a new ‘cologne’ one that represents the golden days of late summer – days of quiet reflection and relaxation in the country.

I asked a friend who grew up in Alberta what Sweet Grass smells like. “Home,” he said.

Check out Sweet Grass in our Shop.