As the ice winds of winter sweep across the northern hemisphere, what better way to warm up than with a spritz of warm, lustrous scent? Well, actually, there are a few, including a roaring log fire, the Slanket, and a one-way ticket to the Maldives. Still, there is something comforting about smelling warm in frosty weather, and certainly the smells of winter – cloves, mulled wine, pine needles, spiced fruit, animal fur – are among the greatest pleasures of the season.
It comes as a surprise that the perfumer who considers that he has the right to bag the name L'Eau d'Hiver – and, furthermore, to declare that it is "the first Eau Chaude" – is Jean-Claude Ellena. Ellena has churned out a few warm-spectrum smells (including L'Artisan's Ambre Extreme, and Acqua di Parma's Colonia Assoluta), but he is the master of fragile, icy freshness. His Bois Farine, for L'Artisan, is ethereal, bitter and woodsy. His Rose Poivrée, for his own Different Company, is stunningly unsweetened and piquant, almost an anti-floral. His Angéliques Sous La Pluie, also for Frédéric Malle, is one of the most peculiar and evasive scents out there, a bit like the olfactory equivalent of that odd shade of pale grey that looks vaguely powder-blue or lilac-tinged or even slightly pink or green or yellow in different lights. Admittedly, with Bigarade Concentrée, he has shown he can work up a sweat; but, just because he can, doesn't mean he wants to. Ellena makes perfumes like Dale Chihuly makes glass sculptures: delicate, intricate, precise; informed by nature, but otherworldly.
Fortunately, with L'Eau d'Hiver, he has played to his strengths. There's a hint of spice at the topnote, but it turns out to be a cool blast of angelica, backed up with iris and heliotrope. A few moments in, the flowers gradually begin to sour down, with a hint of elegant decay coming in; like three-day old water that has been used in a porcelain vase filled with irises and heliotropes, in fact. At this point, there is something distinctly rubbery going on. God knows what. If you're expecting the alleged honey note to impart any sweetness during this process, don't hold your breath. Ellena is far too subtle to pull a Miel de Bois-style overload.
And then it's gone, leaving behind it nothing but the faint sense of having recently been in a snowy garden. Possibly one with a pile of tyres in the corner. I still don't get why those are there, actually. Maybe it's the angelica.
Like all Ellena's best, L'Eau d'Hiver is complex, compelling, and intangible. What it is not, though, is an Eau Chaude. There is nothing chaude about it: this is a mysterious, dreamlike, wintry scent, but it's colder than Nicole Kidman's hands after a long, ungloved yak ride by a fjord on Christmas morning. Brrr. Pass the mulled wine.
