Jo Malone: Ginger Biscuit

Despite having loudly proclaimed my dislike for mainstream perfumes, I've found myself developing a fondness and love for some over the course of my perfumery journey. With spare time, I often catch myself wandering down the lanes of the perfume section of a department store to see how much I can pick up (especially with more abstract blends), or keep a catalogue of certain popular scents in my mind. Although this post is slightly late to the festive cheer (thanks to a particularly nasty health spell), and this fragrance has once again been relegated to the limited edition vaults (having actually sold out in Selfridges ages ago), this scent is particularly well loved and long sought after and I was curious to see if it was worth it. (Spoiler alert - it kinda was). I'm not a huge fan of Jo Malone scents at all (the blends are largely uninspiring to me, and the performance for the price point is a little painful - and having been let down by a lot of mainstream 'gourmands', my hopes weren't particularly high for this one. 

Featuring a precariously placed bottle which I was so afraid would fall and smash to the ground! 

Ginger Biscuit: Our scent of the season, spiced with ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon. Butter-crumbly with roasted hazelnuts and the warmth of tonka bean and vanilla. Top notes: ginger. Heart notes: roasted hazelnut. Base notes: tonka bean

Although this isn't a hyperrealistic gingerbread gourmand by any means, I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this scent. It opens with a lovely, nutty creamy caramel praline, with a splash of zingy spiced cinnamon, and a touch of citrus - adding an almost fruity nuance to the scent very akin to the spiced fruity aspects of gingerbread. The touch of spice blossoms a little towards the later wear in this scent, but it compliments the rich, flavorful vanilla base note, flecked with nuances of brown sugar and sugar cookies. My favorite part of this scent is the hazelnut note - although it's very subtle, it has an almost rice like, nutty soft sweet quality to it that just lurks at each step of the wear. It almost reminds me of Soft (Poesie), but if it was blended with praline and vanilla, with just a hint of earthiness to ground it. Although this is far more sweet and subtle, there's something in the vanilla here that reminds me a bit of Diptyque's Eau Duelle (which I actually quite enjoy) - the vanilla has an aged, oak-like complexity to it that just feels a little more elegant and refined. While the sillage, projection and longevity of this scent is faint, low and much like JM's other offerings, far too watered down. I do understand that not everyone wants to be smelt across a room, the 2-3% concentration of an eau de cologne always feels a little painful to me. 

Although I loathe to admit it, I was deeply enamoured with the scent, and with the addition of the LE/FOMO status, I spritzed this scent on myself every time I walked past a JM store for the entirety of December and eventually pulled the trigger. Although there are dupes for this scent (since it is no longer avaliable), it turns out both popular well known dupes for this blend are somehow even more difficult to acquire than the actual bottle, and so I ended up picking up a 100mL bottle for myself. I only wish that JM would come out with a few more of these gourmands - I've only ever seen rave reviews for this scent, and would also love to see this as a GC/seasonal return someday. I've found myself slightly more receptive to branching out of NA based indies lately (more brands refusing to ship internationally recently), and if more mainstream gourmands were like this, I'd definitely have been a JM fan a lot earlier on. I'm not sure if my 100mL full size bottle will make it to next Christmas, but I definitely know what I'm hoping for next year if it does run out!