4160 Tuesdays Mother Nature’s Naughty Daughters, (2016) by Sarah McCartney

Why are Mother Nature’s daughters naughty? I hear you say. Well it’s more creative-rule-bendingly naughty than wicked, but it has a twinkle in its eye. Perfumer Sarah McCartney (I’m going to add the word inexhaustible) has an encyclopaedic knowledge of perfume regulations. If you don’t believe me, put her on Mastermind. Many of the wild, off grid, twigs-in-your-hair style ingredients involved in Mother Nature’s Naughty Daughters are prohibited or severely limited in their absolute form. There’s also the complication that truly natural ingredients have a lot of variables when they land on skin. Sarah has therefore, rather resourcefully, used natural ingredients that mimic the other natural ingredients that she cannot use. So the notes have been synthetically replicated using natural ingredients from other stuff. Still with me? Trust me, she knows what she’s doing.

So having gone through all that, whilst exploring the delightful sounding broom absolute for the first time along the way, what does it smell like? Well dear reader, I admit to finding apples where there should have been pear but that’s okay. Perfume is a subjective experience, not a test. This is, unusually, a chypre (complete with textbook woody, mossy base), but at the same time a playful fruity floral  that also happens to be a gourmand. In other words, this is a hybrid that will please fans of all three genres.

Here we’re celebrating nature’s rich harvest by using many of perfumery’s beautiful but restricted materials; rose, broom, cedarmoss, raspberry, strawberry and opoponax, plus safe synthetics Hedione and Maltol. Deliciously naughty.

-Sarah McCartney

So what we have here is an opening that reminded me briefly of calvados: orchard fruits and booze. The fruit is framed with praline which gave me an instant hit of those retro boozy chocolate liqueurs you get at Christmas. There is a syrupy note that bridges the top phase to the middle, although nothing is as prescriptive as that here. Roses pop out, but with brown sugar frosting their petals. Is that the broom I can smell? It is reportedly a nutty, woodyness and that’s certainly there, along with a  waft of warm Horlicks (that’ll be the malt).

So far this has given us a little tour covering most of an English Country Garden. So where does the base leave us? On some damp moss, on a wet, cedar bench after the rain, with a glassfull of sticky Pimms and pear pips. Which is not just fine by me, but wholeheartedly agreeable. If birdsong could be bottled, that would be in here too.

Where to buy it

Mother Nature’s Naughty Daughters is available from the 4160 Tuesdays website. Other stockists can be found here.

Disclosure

I was sent a sample of this many moons ago with no strings attached. My decision to review it and my opinion of it are both my own, as always. This review originally appeared in my earlier version of iscentyouaday.