Sweet Milk for the Soul. Perfume Review

Gale warning hail warning Sky sifts high drifts Finding bright blinding white Snowball snowfall Moonscape snowscape Frostbite dost bite Rococo swirls hot cocoa curls Icy glove spicy love Huddle in cuddle in Rock salt clocks halt. Blizzard by Barbara Reiher-Meyers This winter has been formidable. Blizzard after nor'easter after snowpocalypse put me in dire need of comfort. Nesting with the family in a snowed in house is the best kind, especially when one has a warm, cuddly little person to snuggle with...(Although that little one is partly what made this winter so challenging. A blizzard has nothing on a helpless baby in terms of causing havoc.)... A good book comes as a fairly close second on the scale of comfort (Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale suits my mood perfectly). As far as comfort perfumes go, goodness knows I have many. From armor-like green ones to serenity-now incense ones to good old-fashioned vanillas. But I wanted something else, something softer than soft, not too sweet but still delicious, something milky...I've done a post on milk in perfume before, and not much has changed since then in terms of the number of properly-milky fragrances to choose from. It's same old, same old and a little too sweet Matin Calin, Lann-Ael with just a tad too much apple and...well, that's it really. This year, Jo Malone added one more to this short list. Sweet Milk, the charming little number from the Tea Collection came just in time to satisfy my craving, and let me tell you, it hit the spot. As Goldilocks would say, it was Just Right. Very delicate, silky-smooth, soft as a feather, moderately sweet...I was apprehensive about anise, a note I am not comfortable with ordinarily, but it works well here. The piquancy of it blends right into the lactonic fluffiness, making the scent not as monotone as it could have been without it. Food-wise, I would liken Sweet Milk to a very, very thin rice pudding, spiced by a tiny pinch of anise. Mmmm.... Do not expect from this very straightforward blend it a new word in perfumery. It is a simple pleasure, and those are such exactly because they seem familiar. It is also not a powerhouse of a fragrance, but in this case I appreciate and prefer subtlety. A strong perfume of this nature, a seemingly one-note, gourmand kind, becomes bothersome after a while, too cloying, too samey. The sheer quality of Sweet Milk therefore was one of its pluses for me. Overall I think that to do a gourmand with a light hand is quite an achievement and, compared to, for example, Guerlain's Elixirs Charnel by the same perfumer, showcases the versatility of the talent of Christine Nagel, the author of Sweet Milk. So what comforted you this winter? Any particularly cuddly fragrances that you discovered? Read any good books lately? Do tell! Available along with other four scents in this limited edition collection, wherever Jo Malone is sold, $55 for 30ml...and for once I wish it came in a 200ml bottle. Image, my own.