Peppered Tomato Leaves, a ‘scented mist’ from Perfumes Longmarch that comes in great big bottles of 250ml to be sprayed everywhere (‘on t-shirts, tulips, Tintin, tissue, trapezes and tomahawks…’ ) is a stern, pared down tomato; bitter green, brusque and ruddy kneed from being dragged – through the hedgerow backwards – by a lock-jawed, hardbodied sex fiend. In contrast to the tomate charmante we looked at the other day, the likeably extrovert but innocuous Vice Versa, this is a more attention-seeking, spiced matrix of green pungency.
After a beautifully fresh-leaved, anise-twisted opening of peppercorns, orange, cassis, and photorealistic tomato vines, the scent quickly loses tomato kudos and proceeds, nimbly, on a more rough and ragged Lady Chatterley path of outside sex. The musky, almost acrid, absinthe-green of Frederic Malle’s French Lover, immediately apparent and familiar, is here in the base of the scent: a deep, hardened ferret of no sweetness that I imagine will leave some people shuddering slightly, yet others yearning to be taken again outdoors to be savaged.
My earliest scent memory probably involves the headturningly sour-fresh scent of the flowering blackcurrant. I would hide behind the big blackcurrant tree, my imaginary haven, when I was three or four years old and I can still see myself, crouched down at the bottom of the garden, inhaling and sometimes eating, to the horror of my mother, its heavily scented flowers.
It is a smell that many people hate because of its obvious allusions to cat piss (Perfume Shrine did a brilliant article on this olfactory connection), but one that some people, and particularly my younger brother included, really like. The combination of Greg’s two favourite smells in nature (tomato leaves and flowering blackcurrant) in this perfume thus made me buy it for him impromptu when I found it one day in Tokyo recently.
The dry down in Feuille De Tomate Poivrée might be a touch too angular, macho even, for me personally, a touch tight and humourless, but this is nevertheless a rather sexy scent, in a focused, direct and unpretentious way, and I feel pretty sure that my brother, much more a ladies’ man than your host, will carry off this particular tomato with aplomb.
The Black Narcissus 
Dearest Ginza
What a sadistic trip to the salad patch!
For (and I damn you for it) you have made me urgent with anxiety to smell this rough green French cat piss stained lover and take him home with me.
Yet he seems impossibly out of reach. Lostmarch say that he’s gone and may or may not return (how very amour manque) and he’s no where else to be found on the world wide web.
A hunt, I sense, begins.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Dearest Ginza
Who knew the divine inhabited the bologsphere!
For as serendipity would have it our dear Kafka (now cast in the role of Glinda) happened to mention Jovoy in Paris in her latest post and how they have everything… and so they do.
Even this scarlet pimpernel of the plant perfume world.
It will be mine therefore… though perhaps in a little while.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
But I hope you took in my notes of ‘macho’, ‘ rough’ and ‘humourless’.
When I say matrix, I mean a slightly too grid-like, logical, even simplistic scent. It does not have the soul and green magic of top notch Eau De Campagne, for example.
It DOES have a direct, tomato leaved phwoar aspect however, so perhaps you won’t be entirely disappointed. You can always spray your cats with it.
Eau de Oliver Mellors?
A contemporary Oliver, yes.
Would smell good on a workman in dungarees.
From your mouth to God’s ears. it’s only 9:45 AM here. Let’s see what the day brings…
What images!
Hmm…I enjoyed the read, Mr. Ginza, but my face is all puckered just thinking about green tomato leaves and black current. Yeesh. 🙂
No it works, really. And much more tomato than blackcurrant.
You wouldn’t object if someone passed by you wearing this I promise.
I believe you.
Reblogged this on The Black Narcissus.
Wow! Who knew a tomatoes could be so filthy and wicked. Love it!
It’s inexpensive too. Recommended.
Is that what sex fiends do, drag tomatoes backwards through hedges? I’ve led a sheltered life.
I love the smell of flowering blackcurrant, box and tomato leaf – more in gardens than perfumes though. Love galbanum so much I prefer to take my greens that way.
Me too. Ultimately I prefer tomatoes in my food.
And was aplomb ultimately carried off by Greg?
Stainless-steel-fermented Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, especially in cooler years, has the notorious, unmistakable — and to some, coveted — whiff of cat piss. It works remarkably well with their green-lipped mussels and garlic . . .
You have me!
And yes: aplomb was carried very nicely- he’s a great perfume model actually