Jasmin de Pays
Perris Monte Carlo (2019)

So, a beast within me has recently reawakened and I've been on a quest to explore (and in some cases, re-expolore) big, full, dense, white-floral fragrances. I particularly love jasmine and tuberose. I love orange-blossom. I like magnolia...frangipani not so much. And of course, I adore rose (rose isn't a big white floral...just a floral I adore-lolol).

With great anticipation, I applied my generous decant of Monte Carlo Jasmin de Pays. I held my breathe for a few seconds 'cause I feared the fragrance might prove too indolic, too fecal, too intense for my tastes.

Disappointingly, I can barely detect the fragrance once applied to my skin. What I DO detect is a pretty, green, vegetal, wispy, slightly bitter, ethereal jasmine fragrance. A soliflore, for sure. That's it.

Words like "beefy, meaty, thick, heady, earthy, indolic, etc" do not define the fragrance I experience. Sadly, the perfume does not resonate with me.

Nice enough, I suppose. But definitely not full bottle worthy.

Jasmine de Pays is a jasmine for true blue lovers of this King of Flowers. There are many perfumes with decidedly wishy-washy, hedione-vague jasmine accords so that smelling Jasmin de Pays may shock noses not used to such articulated realism. Ellena imparts the voluptuous nature of fecund jasmine blooms, bubbling over and almost too much to bear—delirious rapture.

Be still my beating heart—I have long searched for a Dragon Pearl jasmine in perfume, and I have finally found it through Jasmin de Pays. But it by no means stops here. Tagetes marigold sweetens and sharpens, serving as an exclamation point to a jasmine that quickly reveals that bittersweet decay is imminent. It exhales "I have lived" (to use the words of my friend Sebastian Furtado). These flowers have just a bit more energy stored, allowing all manner of pollinating organisms to buzz and bump until they have more to give. Ripe indoles do not overpower here—they are seductive, but not necessarily lewd.

Jasmine de Pays feels as if it takes through the arc of the flowers' lives: from fresh and sprightly, green and sweet, to their full and bursting maturity, and then their fermenting, narcotic finality. When reaching the "past its prime" stage it feels so real that I can visualize the brown spots and withering, wrinkled edges of each tender petal in my mind. Jasmin de Pays is simply awe-inspiring.

Ok, so I love Jasmine. I’ve a few scents with jasmine fairly forward in them and it’s always caught my nose a beautifully light green floral, and as a guy, it’s never really been overly feminine on me.
Last week I happened to be up a castle, up a hill in Spain. In one of the many courtyard gardens, I caught a whiff of what I thought were stables coming from the adjacent garden. I followed my nose and found not a horse in sight, but a huge jasmine bush, climbing walls and trailing ceilings. The indolic nature of the Jasmine was incredibly soft and perfectly presented alongside the green and sweet side of the plant. If I could have bottled that soliflore alone it would have become one of my few signature scents. This perfume, is as close as I have ever come to capturing jasmine in its entirety and glorious beauty.

Utterly incredible stuff.

Perris Monte Carlo Jasmin de Pays (2020) is a fragrance composed by the legendary Jean-Claude Ellena for the brand, with full attention paid to the entire jasmine flower as Ellena himself grew up in Grasse where much of it was grown and processed into perfume. What this effectively means for the average bloke is little, but the hardcore jasmine fanatic will find a good bit to love here. Ellena's take on jasmine is indeed whole and quite flowery, but the balance of light to dark (clean hedione aspects to musky indole aspects of the plant) stays almost painfully neutral throughout, meaning you won't find much excitement here no matter how you feel about jasmine. That said, the quality is extremely high, and Jasmin de Pays ranks every bit as high up on the leaderboard of niche jasmine soliflores as others such as Diptyque Olene (1988) or Lust by Lush/Gorilla Perfume (2010) tend to do. There is a lot to love, but not a lot to keep you engaged with Jasmin de Pays, and what you see is what you get.

The opening of Jasmin de Pays is... jasmine! Big surprise there, with lots of the hedionic clean aspects of the jasmine flower itself rounded by traces of marigold. I get tiny bits of davana and osmanthus too in here, but it's mostly clean jasmine for the first 30 minutes until the slightly muskier indolic side starts to emerge. The fleshy aspects of the jasmine indole are admittedly scrubbed and turned down. Jean-Claude Ellena is no stranger to animalic notes in his perfumes, but he usually downplays them quite a bit. The next layer of this is going to be a thick clean white musk, with touches of tonka and clove to give some body and skin retention. Like Diptyque Olene, this smells much like jasmine silver needle tea that Teavana used to sell when it existed as a mall store, but Jasmin de Pays smells more like an actual flower because Olene has zero indole. Wear time is pretty long at about 10 hours, so you better like jasmine, buddy. I call this unisex but soliflores tend to find more favor with women. Spring and summer feel like the best time for Jasmin de Pays, or any time after a hot shower.

That's it really, Jasmin de Pays is a love-letter to the flower, penned by one of the modern perfume world's most-treasured composers, and delivered for the mid-tier exclusive niche outfit Perris Monte Carlo. I'll have to admit I was used to seeing Mr. Perris himself or Luca Maffei compose for this brand, as the semi-retirement of Mr. Ellena makes him something of a ghost outside of his own personal line of perfumes (something more well-respected perfumers are doing). But, I'm guessing the budget was good, the subject dear to Mr. Ellena's heart, and the demand for simple but refined one or two subject niche fragrances hasn't really waned since their heyday in the 2000's, all of which paved the way for this. Go out and sample Jasmin de Pays if you really want to smell somewhere in between the jasmine tea of Olene or the full Victorian bordello jasmine juice of Lust, but this balancing act is really the only defining feature of the perfume. For about $200 to get you 100ml of EdP, you have to once again be a real jasmine nut to sink into this, but you won't find much better for the subject without exploring artisanal perfumers. Thumbs up.

Jasmin de Pays opens with yellow marigold to meld with underlying white floral jasmine before transitioning to its heart. As the composition enters its early heart the jasmine highly intensifies, taking over as the star while eschewing the yellow floral's green tinge and gradually adding mild supporting clove. During the late dry-down the jasmine remains though subdued, as it slowly fades to reveal subtle, just slightly animalic musk in the base that hangs around through the finish. Projection is excellent, as is longevity at around 12 hours on skin.

It is no secret that I love jasmine when done right. In truth, a different jasmine soliflore (Jasmin Antique by Rogue Perfumery) released this year (2020) with similar listed notes impressed even beyond my wildest dreams. As Jasmin de Pays, a soliflore from the prior year has almost the same official notes (except the added marigold) would it too impress? Are the two compositions nearly interchangeable?

Let's answer the key question right away for those that don't want to read further... The answer is absolutely, "No." As a matter of fact, for two jasmine soliflores with similar notes, the fragrance profiles are about as dissimilar as can be. It turns out that despite the similar notes, the materials used and the implementation of the two different perfumers (Mr. Manual Cross for Jasmin Antique, and Mr. Jean-Claude Ellena Jasmin de Pays) couldn't be more striking. Jasmine de Pays comes off as seeking the scent of jasmine tea, Dragon Pearl Jasmine Tea in particular. It has a bit of an airy floral nature, presenting as somewhat thin and sanitized. This actually is a very close approximation of the Dragon Pearl Tea I love so much. That said, while in short doses while brewing and drinking the tea it can be quite appealing, but it tends to annoy as time passes, and Jasmin de Pays doesn't really develop much to add new revelations to the mix save for an unwelcome piercing green aspect not present in the tea from the marigold. By contrast, Jasmin Antique (reviewed separately) is deep, heady, narcotic, more nuanced and evolving, capturing the smell of jasmine grandiflorum in the field complete with its indolic presence perfectly. Each will appeal to jasmine lovers to a degree with no overlap, but for *this* jasmine lover, only one is a "must have," masterpiece, and it isn't Jasmin de Pays. The bottom line is the $200 per 100ml bottle Jasmin de Pays captures the scent of Dragon Pearl Jasmine Tea quite well, but it wears thin as time passes with its lack of development and nuance, earning it a "good" 3 stars out of 5 rating and a neutral recommendation except to Dragon Pearl Jasmine tea lovers that can't get enough of its fragrance.