Sucreabeille: Alchemist, Bezoar and Alembic review

As the Alchemist collection will be retiring on the 15th of March (2020), it was definitely a reminder for me to finally get this review finalized - and so if you're curious about the collection and wanted to get something before it goes down, here's your chance! 

The Alchemist collection was inspired by alchemy and have an array of super cool names and accompanying notes, such as Cruicible - smoky palo santo, mysterious absinthe with bright drops of bergamot and oranges, Atlas cedar, sweet fennel, bitter accord, Caduceus -Rich lavender honeycomb is at the heart of this fragrance, with hints of elderberry, oud wood, clove, and patchouli, and Philosopher's Stone - Rain beats on old, weathered cobblestones. A cup of your favorite hot mocha steams next to a bowl of black cherries and black currants. A sprig of wormwood sits, waiting.

One of the reasons why I've included Alembic in this review, is because it felt fitting to match this as a part of a whole - since all of these scents, despite being listed as gourmand notes, have this intense thematic base that runs throughout all of them, which is a rich, dark and sticky aura. It's a little tannic, a little like iron and metal and has a sharp sweetness to it, almost like a deeper, complex version of Byzantine (Sucreabeille). In this sense, it works wonderfully with the rest of the theme - it certainly feels like something you'd smell lurking around with base metals, miracle gold, probably illegal ingredients, well worn pages of books and the "elixir of life". This is definitely one of the more evocative and immersive scents, as most of them also had intense wear time (around 7-8 hours even on a modest application) and large projection (I can even smell the opened vial from a few metres away).  

Alchemist - Swirls of pipe tobacco around a plate of nutty toffee and caramels. A pile of old books and a touch of nag champa. Candle wax dripping from the sconce by the wingback leather chair. and cheerful labdanum wafting through the open window.

Wet: Dampened pages of a leather bound book, a well worn leather chair, warm resinous hues trickling through the curtains.

Dried down: This scent is incredibly tannic, the smell of smooth leather, with worn wrinkles in the folds of the chair, expensive bound books. The slightest trail of smoke from a pipe lazily drifts around the edge of the scent cloud to add a little mystery to the scent, like an extinguished fire, and labdanum lies on the floor of this scent, seeping into the corners with its dark and rich, sticky resinous base. To top it off, there's a touch of something sweet, like a little cup of caramel coffee, its golden sweetness tempered by the bitter grounds of roasted coffee, in a cozy, vintage bookshop. The longer this scent wears, the more the sweetness of the toffee and caramels balance out a little more, giving this scent the feel of a softer, comforting bookshop in the late afternoon, whereas the earlier moments of this scent are definitely of a rainstorm outside, rain leaking through stone windows, flickering candles and damp leather books. 

Perfect for: A date at the local vintage secondhand bookshop. Or maybe late night reenactments of Frankenstein the movie. We love versatility. 

Bezoar - A rich, decadent gourmand of double salted caramel, marzipan, and coumarin, with a dash of old teakwood

I love that bezoar, in the magical sense at least, is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat, yet the notes make it sound so much more appealing than the namesake. 

Wet: A blast of burnt sugar, ropes of spiced caramel spread thin on a teakwood drawer. The burnt sugar is a commonality between all of the Alchemist gourmands, its the same sharp, thin and astringent note that you find, and it calls attention to the scent like a honing beacon. The teakwood is a faint note, but the dance of the bitter/sweet notes demands attention on opening. 

Dried down: The wear of this scent is relatively linear, the foundation of teakwood is a soft and gentle sweet woody aromatic, one of my favorite wood notes. It settles, providing a lovely panelled base for the scent, allowing the bursts of pale sawdust and the rich mahogony of old polished cabinets to burst forth. As the burnt sugar takes a seat, warming bursts of coumarin and cardamom blossom on the skin, and gives a delectable nutty hue to the scent, coloring it with muted oranges, warm browns and rich autumn reds. The overall profile after two hours smelt incredibly familiar, and I racked my brain for a while until I realized that this smells oddly like Little Brown Rabbit (Nui Cobalt Designs), with its warmed spices, carrot seed and cake batter, but Bezoar is a little more prickly and louder. Personally, the fragrant airs of teakwood and the dashes of spice make this my favorite out of the bunch, because I absolutely love a lightly spiced autumnal gourmand, even if it's named after stomach stones from goats. 

Perfect for: Waking up in the morning and really craving carrot cake, but realizing you're on a diet. It's not a cheat day if you're just sniffing the cake, right? 

Alembic: Sweet pumpkin souffle dotted with marshmallows and drizzled with buttery maple syrup. Tuberose wafts through the open front door.

Wet: A whiff of something that reminds me of a petrol station, it's pitch black, slick, a touch of gasoline. There's a touch of something smoky, and a little bit tannic - Imagine Celty from Durarara on a motorcycle, hands on hips waiting for the tank to fill out while there's something vaguely unearthly lurks underneath a petrol stained leather jacket and Doc Martens... perhaps a headless, smoking head. Aspects of this also remind me of Trashcan Man (Hexennacht) but it's a little more atmospheric. 

Dried down:  Leather jackets. Smokey. Burn sugar. This scent remains the same as it's opening, but the pitch note mellows out a little, giving way to something else - like the scent of a freshly ignited charcoal barbeque, burning flecks of amber, a mound of lit coal. The pumpkin and marshmallows are largely absent, fully dominated by the golden hues of the burnt sugar note. In comparison to the rest of the scents, the tuberose features strongly like blinding white firelights, cutting through the dense base of the scent with a sharp edge - and the cutting almond-like profile of the tuberose tips into chemical petrol with indolic sharpness.  To round out the scent, the longer it wears, the stronger the smokey barbecue starts to build momentum - adding an intensely savoury smoked salt note to the scent. 

So u/clawsight actually described this as a dark gourmand, with the same salty-sweet and decay notes. To be honest, as a gourmand fiend, I'd still probably places this more as an atmospheric, and I struggle to call this a dark/evil gourmand at all. I'd probably place this in the basket of people who are looking for smoked notes and perhaps even petrol. This is definitely not the notes advertised at all - and in fact, the notes could have been replaced with this list and I wouldn't have doubted it at all: oiled leather jackets, purring motorbikes, splashes of petrol on wilted tuberose and burnt sugar. For my little gourmand heart, I don't think I'll be revisiting this. 

Perfect for: Rugged, sexy motorcyclist from an urban myths. Smoked salt and sausage sizzles on Saturday nights. 

Bottles: 

These are available for purchase in EDP and oil form, in 1ml, dram (4ish ml), 5ml, 10ml and 1oz/30ml sizes, so you can either stock up, or just sample it.   

- Drams come in Sucreabeille's standard 4ish ml bottles, with their signature labels! With no stopper on the top, you might have to be a bit more careful about application or leaving these open. 

- 5ml bottles come in the standard shape, and they're also dark blue (so you don't have to worry about leaving these out in the light). The caps themselves have a bit of a rubber section to keep the bottles from leaking, but I don't have a problem with these. 

- 10ml rollerballs - personally I find that these rollerballs dispense a little too much product, even if you don't roll them the oil ends up dripping down around the ball. That said, I like the way they look a lot. Unfortunately, these don't seem to be very storage friendly. I have seen a smashed vial on the sub but typically I'm quite careful when travelling with these, typically wrapped in tissues for padding and then a plastic bag in case of leaks, but in terms of display, they tend to topple over pretty easily, especially if you put them all in a row. 

10ml, 5ml and a dram. 

Sucreabeille labels also now are (mostly) resistant to oil, but if you do have any problems with defective labels you can always send a message off to their customer service as I've had several of my labels replaced free of charge. 

I do want to note though, that in terms of the label and the aesthetics of the collection, I really enjoy the color theme but boy are these titles hard to read. u/advokatze had to let me know that I spelt Alembic wrong the first time I posted about it (I still accidentally read it as Albemic), and for about the whole time I've looked at Bezoar, my brain goes. Beo-zar. The labels are not dyslexic friendly, but at least they're vaguely color coded to indicate different scents! 

Disclaimer: These items were sent for review. I was not sponsored for this review or affiliated with this brand, and all opinions are my own, and do not reflect the brand's opinions or interests.