Amber Waters

Florida Water, a photo by Ayala Moriel on Flickr.

My own version of Florida Water created early last week was similar to the versions published by Poucher, only with my own improvements - taking my favourite components from both. Its working name was "Commercial Drive Water" because this is where you will be able to find Florida Water in Vancouver - typically in a Latin grocery store!

After a week of maturation, the geranium and petitgrain take centre stage, with nuances of mint, lime and spice adding the characteristic American sweetness. The amber I selected for this formulation is what I call amber No. 5 - a honeyed, slightly animalic amber base I created for my own palette. It does not exactly remind me of Commercial Drive though. For that I think it will actually need some patchouli ;-)

 
I'm surprised at how sweet and ambery the result is once this has matured. It's not nearly as Coca Cola as I've imagined it to be. While refreshing nonetheless - and I'm testing it in the high humidity of the city of Tel Aviv at midsummer - the sweetness in it is surprisingly tolerable. I was also surprised to find that Mandarin Ambree (one of the two new colognes from Hermes) to be extremely ambery, bordering on an orange candy affair. It's not exactly cooling, but it certainly presents a new twist on the eau de cologne theme.

It's interesting to note, that cistus has been used in Spanish style colognes for centuries. But that note is not just ambery as labdanum (from the same plant - Cistus ladaniferus), but also herbaceous-woody-pine-like, and therefore a lot more appropriate in the toilette freshness of traditional eaux de colognes. I'd like to explore more on herbaceous ambers in the eau de cologne genre. But more so, I'm inspired to create something to slice through this Tel Aviv slimy weather that will somehow relate to the locale.