Unquiet
Things

In this year’s Yule collection, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab celebrates a decade of spectral encounters and spiritual comfort. Here we find grandmothers’ crystal candy dishes alongside parlor séances, Christmas candles burning beside ghostly doubles, and even a mouse stealing bites of lavender-dusted popcorn. From bayberry memories to midnight confections, these scents flicker between darkness and light, between what was and what lingers. Sometimes they’re jaunty and bright, other times they’re weighted with musty glamour and golden memories – but always, they offer solace in winter’s darkness, whether through sweetness, strangeness, or sacred remembrance.

Here are my thoughts on some of these haunting, comforting fragrances.

The Season of Ghosts (bergamot, frankincense, rose geranium, ginger, lemongrass, and blood orange) Opens with the candies that lived in grandmother’s crystal dishes – the confectionary citrus sweetness of pillowy circus peanuts and tangy jellied oranges glowing like stained glass. But it’s the turn it takes, the transformation that haunts: a slow bloom of golden musty glamour that hints at powder puffs and hat veils, of the musky, mossy, bronze grandeur of those perfumes that filled rooms with their presence and lingered for days in fur coats. It’s finding faded sepia-tinted photos in an ornate old candy tin of your grandmother from that unmistakable era, each image radiating the warmth of a moment when time moved slower, and youth seems older than our own age now, more weighted with substance and shadow.

Midnight Marzipan (a ground almond snowpack glistening under a chilly scattering of sugar-bright stars, standing out against a night sky of the darkest cacao) I braced myself for the marzipan in this one; I didn’t even realize I did it, but when I finally smelled what was actually happening in the scent, I realized I had been holding my breath. Though I love marzipan –adore it!– both in scent and taste, it can overwhelm with the high-pitched peal of sugary sweetness. What I got instead was the deep, full, resonant, sonorous richness of barely sweet, dark, dark chocolate. The marzipan was a soft, trilling frill, fluttering at the edges. A duet between Darth Vader and Megan Mullally, where the Dark Side of the Force becomes velvet cocoa-dusted truffles and somehow makes Karen Walker’s signature giggle feel like sugared almond stardust on snow.

Faunalia (a thick, starlit, unspoiled forest, with a burst of wild musk, opobalsamum, black bryony, mandragora, and hemlock) Like opening a forgotten storybook, where the forest’s scent rises between pages tinged with the echo of vanilla – not the sharp bite of pine or wet earth, but something once growing but softly bespelled, slumbering and subdued. The musks feel antique rather than wild, a soft sepia tone rather than vivid green. It’s what you might smell if you pressed your nose to an illustration of dark woods in a Victorian fairy tale, where the ink itself carries old magic and time-worn pages hold the memory of primordial forest and ancient greenwoods.

Poor Monkey (pink lotus root and fig milk with ylang ylang, bourbon vanilla, soft myrrh, fir, khus, and sandalwood incense) Like preserves made from petals gathered too early for dew – a tender, translucent jelly that holds summer’s sweetness suspended in light, the way an altar holds its morning offerings. Fresh figs split open like pale stars, lotus petals floating in milk-white bowls, and unburnt sticks of sandalwood waiting patiently – sweetness as a promise, like tomorrow’s devotions already taking shape in the quiet hours before sunrise.

Pomegranate Milk The red sun races through winter-stained snow like Dracula’s eyes in that final chase – all grenadine turned lurid and glowing with the day’s dying light. Why does this perfume also remind me of Japanese candy discovered in the back of an import shop, that distinctive musty-sweet chalkiness? Perhaps it’s the way time and context reshape sweetness into something stranger – in sunset’s crimson hour or years on a forgotten shelf, what was once simple pleasure takes on an elegant decay.

Porcelain Krampus (brown leather and a bundle of switches encased in pale white orris root and rice powder, translucent white musk, Himalayan ambrette seed, and milky vanilla.) She sits pristine in tissue paper, this porcelain child with cool milky skin and frost-pale curls, radiating a sweetness both powder-pure and glazed smooth – like marshmallows dissolving in winter air, like sugared pears turned to frost on the windowsill. Though she glows with innocence, you know better. That’s why her tiny severed hand lives in your pocket, wrapped in a handkerchief, small and impossibly perfect, still trailing that haunting whisper of confectioner’s sugar and cold cream. You tell yourself it’s for safe-keeping, and perhaps that’s true in a sense,  but really, you’re keeping yourself safe –from her gaze in the dark each night, as she watches you from high on her shelf, with a smile that’s patient and sweet, and ever-so-slightly wrong.

Hard Cider Cake (a thick, spongy white cake spiked with hard apple cider and frosted with whiskey-laden buttercream) A possum-riding gnome rolls up in a car made of twigs and acorns. “Get in, loser,” they grin, “we’re having cider with the Green Man.” What they pour is fresh-pressed and unsweetened, with something unexpectedly verdant lurking in its depths – like drinking autumn sunshine filtered through new spring leaves. The old magics are simple ones: apples and leaves, earth and air, each sip tasting of secrets whispered between the roots of ancient trees

A Cup of Tea in the Verandah (black tea and bergamot shimmer in the glow of sunlit amber as cypress boughs cast lingering shadows, the heart blooms softly with jasmine sambac and tender orris) A single bloom emerges from craggy castle walls like a long-lost, long-gone friend impossibly appearing in morning light – its petals glowing rosy with the same translucent warmth as sunbeams through stained glass. The stone beneath holds secrets in its tea-stained shadows, cool and tannic as bitter centuries of words unsaid, feelings unreturned. Memory blooms here, unbearably delicate yet persistent and softly strangling as ivy, reaching through time toward a cup that was never filled.

Phantom Team of Horses (a spectral cacophony of shimmering, translucent dun sandalwood, grey amber, and wraith-chilled chestnut galloping through the mist-cloaked shadows of time, a clattering of clove and black pepper, and a crack of phantom leather) Through mist and gloaming, phantom hooves prowl and roam – a nutty-woody-resinous haunting that refuses to settle into silence. The wood whispers like morning fog, barely there; a subtle saltiness clings to the chestnut’s echo, while grey amber broods beneath it all, murky as twilight in forgotten hollows. Like those ghostly horses that never quite reach their destination, these scents circle and hover, their spectral stampede more whisper than thunder, more shadow than storm.

The Phenomena of Witchcraft (green balsam, bay leaf, fossilized amber, blackened vetiver, and clove bud cloaked in oud) The morning after a midnight revel, musty clove smoke and primordial resins mingling in the morning’s murk and morass. When witches trade their broomsticks for bar stools – all that wild green magic gone deliciously seedy, forest herbs trampled underfoot in an alley behind a dive bar, sacred incense mingling with spilled spirits. Like knocking thrice on heaven’s door and getting an answer from somewhere decidedly south.

Frau Holle (snow-covered pines, witches’ herbs, bestial musk, flax, and ethereal flowers that represent both birth and death) Sometimes, we run across a perfume that bears little resemblance to our expectations when it comes to its blueprint of notes. Such is the case with this atmosphere of bracing winter mint and bitter forest berries, scattered across the rapidly dissipating warmth of a recently vacated featherbed. The fog from the hearth is dusky and strange, like herb-steeped milk in an abandoned bowl.

Lavender Kitchen Mouse (lavender cotton candy fur and vanilla popcorn balls, sent skittering out of the kitchen with a good-natured wave of our polished wood rolling pin) For a popcorn devotee – nay, a popcorn zealot who would happily survive on nothing but perfectly popped kernels for the rest of time, dental floss bills be damned – there is nothing quite like that first hit of toasty corn. Whether it’s movie theater butter pooling in the ridges, nutritional yeast giving it that umami funk, or simply sea salt bringing out corn’s inherent sweetness (and let’s be clear: adding caramel, or indeed any form of sweetness to popcorn, is an unforgivable crime against both nature and the pure pleasure of popped corn). But here’s something entirely unexpected: that perfect salty-corny base sprinkled with lavender’s crisp, herbaceous brightness. Like finding fresh sprigs tucked between kernels, adding an aromatic sharpness that cuts through the savory warmth. It’s a weird combination and probably shouldn’t work – much like how finding a beady-eyed little mouse nibbling in your popcorn bowl as you reach for another handful would be pretty jarring – but somehow, this odd little creature has charmed its way into my heart.

Ube Sufganiyot A soft swirl of fried dough, a scant sifting of powdered sugar, and a filling that melts all its elements – white chocolate, pistachio, and coconut – into one creamy, nutty reverie. Pair this with Lavender Kitchen Mouse above for the perfect snack box curation at an all-night Wes Anderson movie marathon, where every treat is just slightly offbeat and endearingly peculiar.

Paysage (the pale moon pouring magic: Tunisian opium and mugwort with blackened bourbon vanilla, tuberose, glittering white musk, datura accord, wild plum, and tobacco absolute.) In the bottle, I know exactly what this is: my mother-in-law’s Jólakaka, all rum-soaked candied lemon peel and winter warmth. But on skin, it transforms into something far more mysterious – like a lemon icicle in one of those classic locked room mysteries where the detective finds nothing but an inexplicable puddle of water beside the body. Sharp and crystalline yet impossible to grasp, bright citrus frozen into a vanishing elegance, leaving you to question whether you really understood what you experienced at all.

Eighteenth Lash (vanillekipferl plunked in a pile of pine needles) Buttery, crumbly, melty cookies with a base of bitter, oily walnuts and a rich, caramelized shortbread bottom…baked in the steam and sap of an enchanted pine’s resinous heart, they’ve taken on the deep forest’s secrets – as if being born in the heart of an ancient conifer has imbued them with its balsamic soul. Wear this scent and imagine this treat while Chelsea Wolfe’s haunting voice carries you far over misty mountains cold, where dark things sleep in hollow halls beneath the fells.

The Human Double (a shadow-blackened fougere steeped in an uncanny, discomfiting lavender tar) Imagine if lavender went sepulchral, if coumarin turned to ash, if oakmoss grew on graves – this is the shadow-self of a classic fougère. Though we don’t know this one’s building blocks, we know its intentions: the familiar herbal notes have been submerged in something black and viscous, like catching your reflection in a darkened window at midnight and watching it linger after you’ve walked away. Doppelgangers embody pure existential horror – they violate our most fundamental sense of uniqueness through their unheimlich theft of selfhood. This is what happens when your double claims your signature scent as its own, and worse, wears it with more authority than you ever did.

Gently, Gently, They Are Timid (candied orange and pink peppercorn, sugared freesia petals, vanilla bean, and white honey) “The weird the Spirit brings,” as mentioned in the lyrics of this perfume’s inspiration is jaunty and bright, and indeed spirited. This could be the signature scent of the most gleeful parlor ghost, whose enthusiasm for the spectral life is utterly contagious. The first manifestation brings bursts of rosy spice and diaphanous flower petals before settling into its true form: a tatted lace doily holding the memory of creamed toffees and sugared meringues, all grounded in something as smooth and refined as the cream in a proper lady’s tea. The spirits probably attend her séances just to watch her elaborate table-floating mechanisms with fond amusement – they’re happy to play along with a hostess who goes to such lengths to entertain them.

Lavender Avocado Toast (a toasted slice from the middle of a springy, oaty loaf blessed with a rich green schmear and sprinkled with lemon juice and lavender sea salt) This is not the avocado toast I was expecting – but rather a delicate, floral violet-tinged lavender jam mingling with thick, cultured salted butter of such distinct creamy richness, all melting into warm, crusty golden toast that’s been dusted with what might be flower-infused sugar, might be fairy dust. This is what happens when your trendy café is secretly run by flower fairies who’ve decided to put their own enchanting spin on the brunch menu.

The Flame of the Bear (fir resin, bayberry, myrrh, mistletoe, and oak bark) When I smell The Flame of the Bear, memory catches in my throat like pine smoke: the same grandmother who brought out those crystal dishes of candy I mentioned in The Season of Ghosts had a bayberry candle whose scent is everything that Christmas is to me today, as an adult: a soft sweetness twined with delicate spice, the very essence of evergreen twilights and December promises. She would unwrap it from tissue paper with such care, as if it held more than just wax and scent – and of course it did. Some scents are time machines, and this one carries me back through winters past, when love could be captured in something as simple as candlelight and its reflection in her eyes. I can’t smell this without seeing her light it, then reaching for my hand (so I wouldn’t touch it!)

Krampus Kreme Latte (hazelnuts, almonds, and coffee beans sweetened with heavy cream froth and honey and spiced with ginger, black pepper, black cardamom, and cacao.) When I smelled this extremely robust coffee scent, I thought, “woweee, this smells like spicy Krampus coffeeshop romantasy #booktok drama!”

KRAMPUS’S FORBIDDEN GRIND
#1 in Demon Romance
(CW: coffee addiction, consensual soul bargaining)
When artisanal coffee roaster Peppers McGee* accidentally summons Krampus with her darkest, most potent brew yet, she doesn’t expect him to become her most demanding regular. The way he salaciously savors her honey-kissed foam and black pepper sprinkle makes her wonder if he’s hunting for more than just the perfect cup. Between the scorching intensity of fresh-ground beans and the sweet heat of their growing attraction, Luna must decide: keep playing it safe with her usual roasts, or risk it all on a blend that could consume her completely.

“The coffee shop demon romance I never knew I needed” – BookTok
“Finally, a Krampus who knows his way around an espresso machine” – Literal Demons Book Club

*Peppers McGee shows up in a lot of my perfume stories! See also Blue Oud by Cognoscenti and Eldritch by Pineward

The Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab 2023 Yule collection is currently live and available for purchase. As this is a limited edition series, sample sizes imps are not available.

Need more Yule scents? Have a peep at my Yule reviews from 2023, 2022 and 2021 and a single review for 2019 though I could swear I have several years’ worth of BPAL Yule reviews floating around that out there. And I know this because…

…PSSSST! Did you know I have collected all of my BPAL reviews into one spot? I’m about a year behind with adding new stuff to the document, but as it stands, there are over 60 PAGES of my thoughts and rambles on various limited-edition scents from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab over the years: BPAL REVIEWS BY S. ELIZABETH (PDF download)

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