Mountain Chalet
Based on your responses to our LavenderandSpice.com Quiz, you are most likely to find a fragrance that matches your personality and desires from the scents of the mountain forest and the high meadows.
What is Mountain Chalet?
Both fougère and chypre styles are traditionally heavy on the moss and include a good dose of powdery coumarin, green or narcotic florals in the heart, and heavy ambery, animalic notes in the base. Coty’s Chypre included sandalwood. Fougère Royale did not include a wood note. These other categories smell of the forest, but not necessarily the trees.
Dry wood fragrances almost always include some form of cedar note in the base. They often have a smoke note and do not include moss. They can be extremely dry, with the complete absence of warm base notes or strong animalic ingredients, but in recent years often include some warmer elements. Floral notes are often not present, with green lavender, bright pine, and citrus openings more common. Black pepper and other spices may be included.
The modern aromachemical Iso E Super is a foundational ingredient in this category as are dry sandalwood aromachemicals like Firsantol and specialty compounds like Clearwood.
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Why Mountain Chalet Is the Right Scent for You
Aries, ram, born of fire and the sun, where do you belong if not at the top of the mountain? Perhaps the cooling mint opening of a dry woody scent would address overheating. Libras, an air sign, will benefit from the cleansing nature of these high mountain scents as they age. Sagittarius, seeker of knowledge, half-beast and half-man, mutable fire symbol of the late autumn, finds refuge in the quest, the mountain ascent as the ultimate scene where change and impermanence meet. All of these signs are looking for a directness and clarity of purpose that this scent category offers.
You are looking for something unexpected and exciting, either the serendipitous snow shower or the planned intense mountain hike (or perhaps both). There is always the glissade to get you both down in altitude quickly. Your appetite tends towards the savory or the intense, the waffle or the dry whiskey, instead of the sweet desserts. Okay, there were a few glasses of Pinot. Happiness smells like ozone, a snowy forest. You may already be Reese Witherspoon in Wild but fantasize of handling the intensity of Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty.
Sexy means a blanket by the fire, the bracing scent of high altitude lavender coming through the window, black coffee in the morning before another round. All of this fantasy during your mid-afternoon Coke Zero.
We selected the Top 10 Mountain Chalet scents to help get you out on the trail and on your way to trying on something from this alluring fragrance category.
Top 10 Mountain Chalet Scents
1) Creed Royal Oud
This 2011 release is a favorite of Creed fans as well as those looking for a refined cedar scent. Cedar, listed here as a heart note, is present throughout the relatively linear dry down. The galbanum and angelica lend different facets of very intense greenness, keeping this from getting too dry or falling too quickly into the creamier sandalwood/musk. Reviewers comment that whatever synthetic oud is used does not make much of an appearance.
Top Notes: Calabrian lemon, Pink berry, Sicilian bergamot
Heart Notes: Cedar, Galbanum, Angelica root
Base Notes: Indian oud, Sandalwood, Tonkin musk
2) Olympic Orchids Woodcut
This is a love song to the scent of freshly milled wood. It has the bright pine freshness, a restrained cedar, a fullness and warm wood from the oak and Tolu balsum, resin from the freshly-cut plank, and the burnt sugars from the sap as the blade cuts through the wood. Reviewers note that this is a warmer, less intense version of CDG Hinoki (see next scent).
Notes: Pine, Cedar, Oakwood absolute, Tolu balsam, Olibanum, Caramel, Burnt sugar, Vanilla
This 1995 release came before Creed became “Creed” in its current form. This is not the seminal scent from the house, but one of the popular ones from its well stocked list. According to Creed, this is meant to evoke the smell of sparkling streams running through the snow-capped Alps. This is actually primarily a fruity musk scent by structure, but capture the fresh mountain air for many. The galbanum and petitgrain bring a lasting green sharpness to offset the metallic, freshie notes of this thoroughly modern creation.
Top Notes: Bergamot, Mandarin
Heart Notes: Green tea, Blackcurrant
Base notes: Galbanum, Musk, Sandalwood, Petitgrain
Ok, we broke our “no moss” rule here, but it isn’t a major theme. CDG extends the work of the incense Kyoto from their previous series with this intensely green cedar perfume. The brief to perfumer Antoine Maisondieu—sitting in an outdoor cypress soaking tub on a chilly morning. While many reviewers are not pleased with the resulting scent, many others have commented that this does indeed smell like a misty Japanese forest with the steam and cut, wood planks of the bath captured. The pine, turpentine (distilled from pine wood), camphor and thyme leave this green, green throughout with cedar taking the lead for dominant wood scent. This is a dry, transparent, ethereal cedar that is just balanced with the use of frankincense and herbal notes in the heart and a wet, earthy vetiver in the base.
Notes: Cypress, Turpentine, Campher, Cedar, Thyme, Pine, Georgywood, Incense, Treemoss, Vetiver
This is the holy grail of dry wood. This is not forest, or sawmill, but wood. The cypress and sandalwood fight it out until the cypress win and then all bow out in a refined ambergris accord denouement. This is wood for serious people, no smiling.
Notes: Sandalwood, Rosewood, Cypress, Ambergris
6) Parle Moi de Parfum Cedar Woodpecker/10
There is not much to say about a perfume that claims to only represent two notes. Except that in this case, the cedar is a blend of essences that starts bright and citrusy and slowly drops into a creamier wood closer to sandalwood. The iris is soap and powder without sweetness. There is a depth to orris butter (or the ionones) that brings a woody, floral, fruity depth far beyond just the powder. This is the same complexity that cedar can bring, whether from a range of essential oils, fractions, or synthetics. This scent delivers on a clean cedar with a powdery, barbershop base that skirts the line between anodyne consumerist synthetic at the base and a satisfying, clean wood concept scent.
Notes: Cedar, Iris
The pepper and citrus opening is bright, with the pepper lasting well into the dry down along with the incense and nutmeg. None of these notes steals the show. This scent balances the smoky/creamy guiacwood, the balsamic, woody, nutty, spicy, creamy, floral notes of sandalwood, with the dry, warmy, spicy characteristic cedar notes. The oud has a smoothing effect, but is not dominant, in the construction of a dream of woodiness. Wonderwood is unabashedly synthetic in its construction of this fantasy. It does succeed for those not looking for clear, natural wood notes.
Top Notes: Madagascan pepper, Bergamot, Somalian Incense, Nutmeg
Heart Notes: Cristalon, Cashmeran, Gaïacwood, Cedarwood, Carvi Graines
Base notes: Somalian Javanol, Sandalwood, Vetiver, Oud
In Wonderwood and to a degree Tam Dao you have just dry wood with very little else happening for most of the scent. Fou d’Absinthe, a 2008 release by perfumer Olivia Giacobetta is marketed as a a forest in the Pyrenees with a crackling of a fire and a frosted absinthe. The absinthe and angelica provide a bright green opening and that warms into an earthy spice driven by the patchouli. The warmth continues through the pine notes, which sets this perfume apart from many cooler coniferous forest attempts.
Top Notes: Absinthe, Angelica, Blackcurrant bud
Heart Notes: Pepper, Clove, Nutmeg, Ginger, Patchouli
Base notes: Pine needles, Cistus, Fir balsam
Released in 1955, this classic Italian aftershave by perfumer Lino Vidal is barbershop in the forest with a deep green pine and dry cedar offsetting the soapy moss/amber/musk drydown.
Top Notes: Bergamot, Lavender, Lemon
Heart Notes: Geranium, Pine, Clary Sage
Base notes: Cedarwood, Moss, Musk, Amber
Polo (Green) worked its way deep into the hearts of a generation of young men coming of age in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. The 1978 release by perfumer Carlos Benaim emerged at the end of a period of aggressive green scents heavy with galbanum and moss, usually with lavender and sometimes geranium, and a healthy dose of musk. Benaim moved men’s perfume to a fresher, brighter green married to a more complex floral heart and an earthier/incense base more complex than the standard moss/musk dirty soapiness. Drop the sex, overpower everyone with a strong pine and throw everything against the wall. It did stick, and with the most recent formulation, still fits the bill as a fresh woody scent with some intrigue.
Top Notes: Pine, Lavender, Juniper, Artemisia, Bergamot, Cumin, Basil, Green notes
Heart Notes: Coriander, Marjoram, Jasmine, Carnation, Geranium, Thyme, Rose
Base notes: Oakmoss, Patchouli, Leather, Cedar, Amber, Musk, Frankincense