Black Vines
Kerosene (2014)

I remember visiting a market where a spice vendor had massive containers of all types of Eastern seed and root spices - licorice root, cinnamon, anise, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, coriander, etc. - in their store that was long but only a little wider than the average walk-in closet, and many of the spices were whole in their unadulterated form. The purveyor would grind the spices for you upon request and he was extremely busy with about seven grinders constantly whirring away. The aromas released into the air were noxiously potent to the point I couldn’t stay in the store because my throat and nasal cavities felt like they were collapsing. As wonderful and evocative as that little shop was, it was meant for people far more used to those spices as real and fresh than I was.

The opening of Black Vines reminds me a lot of that experience, save for the sudden and anxious worry that I was going to suffocate. The anise, licorice, and cinnamon top needs to be experienced while braced because its pungent photorealism will shock and awe. Dry to the point of sucking moisture from its surroundings, cold, spicy, woody, and earthy. To make sure it doesn’t completely feel like you’re snorting lines out of your kitchen pantry containers, sticky and resinous conifer sap adds a bright green and sylvan lift, and a fruity currant type note adds the slightest touch of moisture and sugar needed to give it a softer and more human touch. The inspiration for this perfume are the green vines of black licorice, hence the name Black Vines, but for a perfume using a lot of naturalistic and botanical materials I feel like I’m walking through an enchanted forest, or the forest on some alien planet. Everything is correct but nothing feels right. It’s a stirring experience.

The dry down to the final skin scent brings you safely home with well-sanded and smooth balsams, and a gorgeously dry and earthy tonka bean - a vanillic zapped of all sugar - wrapped in the gentlest of smoky incense. It’s a really good winter holiday potpourri, basically. I know that sounds insulting but it really isn’t, not when you realize that you wished your potpourri smelled a lot more like this. I see this being in heavy rotation for my fall scents, especially when I’m in a mood to warp my mind and senses. Great stuff.

Yummmmmmmy! I am a girl who loves black jelly beans, and wishes they made black Twizzlers. I even buy licorice root at the health food store sometimes just to chew on. And, here is a little secret–the magic throat moistening ingredient in Throat Coat Tea is ....licorice! It's good for you! Especially when illness, allergies, climate control, or other circumstances, like falling asleep with one's mouth open, cause your throat to dry so badly you cannot stop coughing–licorice soothes and stops the most throat-lacerating itchy compulsive coughing spells dead in their tracks.

It is an acquired taste. I used to hate the stuff, so I am not mad at you, if you quail at the thought of it. Even if you don't like licorice to eat, you still might like the scent, as its herbal complexity has little in common with anything else I can think of. Black Vines uses a handsome broad spectrum licorice profile, a little bitter but more like the resinous herbal cough-drop smell of Ricola drops.

Luca Turin, and our own House of Phlegethon, detect fig in the composition, but the only aspect of this perfume that reminds me of figs is its illusory stickiness, that is reminiscent of opening a fresh package of Turkish figs, the kind that come shrink wrapped in a circular shape. Cracking one of those packages open, I get a kind of herbal-honey aroma, but the sweetness of figs, their almost floral smell, that is not here.

Like most Kerosene fragrances, it comes on strong from the outset. There is no classical citrus blast, but rather a dank, kind of mentholated initial stage, that evolves into (in my mind) the scent of all the black hard-shelled candies I adore–jellybeans. ropes, Good & Plentys from the movie theater, English style Allsorts (my favorites–I can gorge myself on those things). The pwefume's Initial dankness indicates the scent's origins in nature, with its rooty funk lightened and, I think, rendered spicier and even more complex with the addition of anise (another personal favorite–my grandmother always made anise biscotti for Christmas, which might explain my love for black candy).

Anise, with its nose-numbing clove and hints of black pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg, might seem an obvious choice, for a licorice accord. Both anise and licorice also have menthol in their scent profiles, so even at its most basic, the perfume has delicious hot-cold tension, warm spices and cool aromatics, confusing the senses to the point of intoxication. It all smells black, black as a black hole in space, the scent pulling you through its black mirror and rumbling you into disorientation. Cold
stone, fir needles and balsam, mastic gum–and then another burst of hot spice as a hint of red pepper (a razor thin slice like Fate Woman's) leads to a burst of fizzling, sparkling smoke

This stage is like light reflecting off jet beads and faceted onyx, black stones that refract low-spectrum shades of red, blue, and purple. I smell frankincense with a touch of opoponax for sweetness, mirroring the aromatic duo of licorice and anise. From the dank greenness of its fir balsam, I also smell an accord that could almost be cannabis resin. Another reviewer mentioned opium (not the perfume), which this has a touch of, more complex plant resinoids laced with the darkness of the intoxicating aura of the forbidden. As it develops, it becomes spicier and hotter, with an alluring sweetness to balance any bitter off notes. The drydown turns to a woodsy incense not so far from the drydown of my beloved Ormonde Jayne Privé, a perfume with otherwise nothing in common that I can possibly think of. Black Vines s an extraordinarily attractive perfume on the right person at the right time, and I appreciate its halo of dark mystery (how many times can I use the word “dark” in a review? I suppose this gets the point across).

This is a different treatment of licorice than another one of my favorite perfumes, the remarkable Reglisse Noire from 1000 flowers (under-appreciated, and deserving of more discussion here, even if the old bottle with its lovely atomizer option has been replaced), a silky licorice perfume that employs the accord's freshness rather than its spicy darkness. It also brings to mind. a series of other perfumes with clever use of fir balsam, Robert Piguet's marvelous Oud series–not licorice per se, but dark, aromatic perfumes that, to my nose, bring forth phantom licorice scents, especially as much of Piguet's house, or at least Aurelian Guichard's work for them, seems hard shell candy-coated (he has done the same for some of his perfumes at Bond No. 9).

Black Vines smells like it has neither liquid silkiness, a hard shell, or the softly powdered exterior of Allsorts–it feels like those candies turned inside out, their sticky insides freshly opened. It captures the moist, dense, resiny qualities of plant materials usually protected by tree bark, things that are not meant to be exposed to the light. It seems like a perfume made for lovers of oddball candy (obviously), modern and old tyme goths, gearheads, Wiccans, incense enthusiasts, people who live to wear black, anyone who wants to cultivate a bit of extra mystery, lovers of deep shades of lipstick and nail varnish, maybe even the perverse preppy looking for more from life. I shall be attending a Gary Numan show in a couple of months, and I've found my scent–hard part's over, the clothes will be comparatively simple).

Black Vines is not a projection beast. It is built from so much resinous material that it probably does not get more than a few inches from skin, unless you artfully layer. I have considered creating some body crème with a scentless lotion so I can layer up (I might make some soap too). Luca Turin very famously awarded it one of a parsimonious few five-stars in his and Tania Sanchez's most recent guide, and the more time I spend with Black Vines, the more I follow its twists and turns down its byways and alleys, the more I feel inclined to agree.. I can't evaluate it as a fig scent, but maybe someday i will smell its figgy ness. As a woodsy-licorice-gourmand-incense, I think it is outstanding. There is something about the accord (not the execution) that brings to mind a rough-around-the-edges, scruffy, artisinal take on the fragrances of Thierry Mugler, where Aurelian Guichard sometimes moonlights, too. This is not the only Kerosene perfume that reminds me of something Mugler might do, which serious praise, coming from me. It seems to have no gender, although some very high femmey types might feel uncomfortable in it.

All of Kerosene's perfumes are extremely long lasting. Black Vines is no different. I get at least 12 hours on skin with 3-4 sprays. I love it so much that I usually overspray, and then top off. It is a rarity in the perfume world–a novelty that does more than just be different, for difference's sake, and it is one of Kerosene's best. If you enjoy candy-shop gourmands that aren't Pink Sugar, any of the Reglisse variations in established classical perfumery (serious pedigree there, btw–Caron, Hermès, etc), witchy-gothy stuff, bold and spicy accords, or unusual incense perfumes, you should smell this, even if you hate the black candies. This is my kind of thing, and I am promoting it to my 5 favorite perfumes on my virtual bathroom shelf over on that other site where I don't go so often. 5 pitch black glittering matter-devouring stars, and two (surprise!!) matte black thumbs up.

God knows, I worship Luca Turin, but this time he's gone too far. Rubber, metal, and Ben-Gay - an accord, yes, but for whom? Lurking in the deep background is a soft, sweet edible, which eventually takes over, but not till you chomp through tinfoil with a filling in your tooth. I admire this perfumer's nerves of steel, and I'm going to try the rest of his samples, but this one...no way!

The coniferous forest in high summer: a dark green almost medicinal scent of sun-ripened needles, sap and resin, with a gooey core of warm spiciness. Black Vines may contain a powerful dose of chewy licorice and spice evoking also a high monastic atmosphere, but they are so seamlessly enfolded in the magic forest that the experience is transporting. Eventually it's that licorice note that reveals itself as the presiding spirit of this perfume, a kind of black on black emergence reminiscent of the slow progression of a doom metal track towards a moment of transcendence. This is a perfume of intensity and great depth; the wearer has to lose their self to it – that may not be to everyone's taste. But wear it on a cold day to feel an almost fecund summer warmth radiate from your being.

The best fig-oriented fragrance I've smelled in years. The fig is earthy with a dark green note from the ivy. Anise, cinnamon, fir, and balsam are well-mixed. Very impressed with the cinnamon as I often have a hard time detecting this note. The Tonka, incense, and vanilla create a "new" oriental incense accord. I can't put my finger on it or describe it - it's different; temple incense maybe. Not ordinary. Black Vines seems to me to be sweet and spicy overall. Not in a sickening way.

Black Vines by Kerosene certainly isn't the first fragrance featuring licorice/anise blended with something else; there is licorice with lavender (Hermèssence Brin de Réglisse), licorice with rose and amber (Aoud Black Candy by Mancera), licorice with mint (Reglisse Noire by 1000 Flowers), and licorice with lemon (Caron Eau de Reglisse), to name a few. But this licorice with fir/balsam/cypress blend is, by far, the most intriguing and powerful of them all. (The drydown reminds me very much of Eau des Baux by L'Occitane, but Black Vines is much deeper, and richer, than Eau des Baux.) Black Vines is licorice and wintergreen on steroids! But of course, most people don't like the smell of wintergreen, that familiar medicinal scent from muscle rub creams and Pepto Bismal, but this is exactly the reason I find it therapeutic.