Resinous high church incense, a little bit boozy, as though the priest has been hitting the bottle immediately before communion. There's something hay-like mixed in, along with mandarin and lemon and an astringent ivy note, reminiscent of the one in Beach Hut Man. As it settles, a strong cedar emerges, and as does frankincense, along with a fairly light vetiver-patchouli combo. It's a monastery in the Mediterranean somewhere, inland, at twilight on a very still day. As it dries down, it loses some of its distinctiveness, and there's that common ambery drydown shared by so many other incense-heavy perfumes.

This is the first perfume from La Manufacture I've sampled. Looking at the rest of their line, they appear to specialise in riffs on well-known perfumes. If so, I've no idea what this one is a variation of. Nor what the concentration might be: what I can say is my skin has an oily glaze after spraying this, which suggests the concentration of perfume oils must be quite high. It's also pretty powerful: a couple of sprays of this is plenty.

What it is though, is pretty good. There's enough sweetness and shapness not to make this solely a head shop bomb, or be overly reminiscent of a priest swinging a thurible with enough burning incense to set off the fire alarms. There's nothing here that's revolutionary, but it's very well executed with decent-quality ingredients, with enough callbacks and surprises to avoid linearity. Worth hunting out, especially when bottles often turn up heavily discounted on online stores.