MoonaLisa: Christmas Cocoa and Iced Gingerbread review

Another part of the MoonaLisa winter scents review, but this time with a lengthy tangent regarding their alcohol sprays formulation. 

Iced Gingerbread: Realistic Gingerbread blend with mild nostalgic Yuletide spice and white icing!

Mmmm. Spice! This is definitely a gingerbread scent - it opens with a decadent mix of clove, cardamom, cinnamon and nutmeg paired with the zesty spiciness of the ginger.  After dry down, the spices mellow out a little, with just a tinge of sweet icing sugar and a little bit of citrus zest. For me, this reminds me a lot of Gingerbread Trifle (Flaming Flamingo), where parts of it start to lean a little fruity (almost apple/pear like). I do think it captures gingerbread well, but I have to confess, it's nowhere near my all time favorite gingerbread scent (the honors go to The Nice List from Sixteen92 - which I desperately hoard), but I have layered this with Pumpkin craves Treats (Arcana) which is just delicious. On its own I think I'm largely ambivalent about this scent, but I think it works really well as a layering note! 

Christmas Cocoa : What warms your heart and hearth more than a steaming cup of Christmas Cocoa!!  Hot cocoa with an espresso shot, topped with gobs of whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon, chili and nutmeg, with a hint of sweet smoldering yule fire in the distance.

I admittedly, didn't enjoy this very much from the vial - but I do love the way this mellows out on application. I have a lot of good things to say about Moonalisa's chocolate notes - they're rich and not at all dusty like cocoa absolute tends to be, and I would highly recommend Rigo Jansci Hungarian Chocolate Cake. I also love their coffee note, which is beautiful in French Quarter Coffee with jelly filled Beignets. Their coffee/chocolate blends are usually quite rich and creamy while still retaining the chocolatey/coffee intensity, but this is one leaves me a little stumped - I get a vague hint of chocolate powder, paired with a few drips of watered down coffee, but the scent quickly fades into a strange plastic leaning hot chocolate with a hint of chilli powder. I have to confess, I don't like this scent very much - it's not a scrubber but it's not for me at all. I'll stick to my Hungarian Cake and Quarter Coffee I think. 

This leads me to a slight tangent about the house and alcohol based perfume/EDPs:

This is definitely not the scent I envisioned I would be receiving based off my prior experiences with the house. I can't confess that I've tried all of the house's EDPs compared to their oil forms, but the few I have tried often don't reflect the depth and complexities compared to the oil based scents. Although I tend to prefer EDPs/spray formats when I want projection and intensity, I think Moonalisa's EDPs tend to perform poorly. I've seen the EDPs be compared to body sprays, and while I have definitely tried better performing body sprays from other places, these EDPs do feel distinctly watered down. I've previously mentioned that I reached out to the house regarding the concentration/intensity of scents but received a response that reassured me that all of the scents were perfectly fine as they are most concentrated they could be. 

According to the website, these are described as alcohol perfume sprays rather than EDPs (as EDPs usually refer to a concentration of 15-20%, where as parfums are 20-30%), but specifically - 

All of MoonaLisa's™ perfume sprays are one fluid ounce of concentrated perfume oil dispersed into perfumer’s alcohol. 

Based on this description, my understanding is that the alcohol sprays are in fact, the usual perfume oils with the addition of perfumer's alcohol. While there's no ratio, this might be a clue as to why a lot of the reviews seem to imply that there's a weaker concentration/intensity of scent, and why the performance of the scent seems to have been negatively impacted in most of their alcohol sprays. I can't say for certain that this is the case, but this is my guesswork when I compare the significant difference in performance between the two formats. 

For me, I've taken to mixing my perfume oils into the alcohol spray vials (all of them are fully alcohol soluble!) - which has definitely significantly boosted the performance and intensity and projection of the scents. As an international, we don't often get EDPs shipped here directly without it costing an arm and a leg, so I am a big fan of DIYing some alcohol sprays - I usually mix 1:1 or 1:2 ratio of perfume oil and perfumer's alcohol (ratio depending on how intense you want your scent!) when I want a lovely scent with pretty good results, so if anyone is interested in tinkering around with these, I've definitely done it before and loved my little handmade alcohol sprays.