Sasanoa Eau de Parfum

Sasanoa EDP was the signature fragrance of the wedding of Nat and Adrianne on July 23rd, 2022. It was the first actual perfume I ever made (if you exclude several trial attempts before this one). To the uninitiated, it’s really easy to get a mixture of things to smell good. It’s really, really hard to get it to smell like perfume. The reason? It’s complicated, but perfumes are made up not just of pleasant notes, but of a balance between pleasant notes and things that smell, well, unpleasant on their own. We are attracted to the complexity because our olfactory cortexes are better at processing smells than our brains. In other words, a lot of smells are attractive because of a certain je ne sais quoi that is our brain telling us that a smell is good or interesting without being able to actually describe it beyond, say, “mysterious,” or “musky.”

Named for the tidal channel that forms Robinhood Cove, cleaving the island of Georgetown in two, Sasanoa is meant to be reminiscent of the promise of a Maine summer, with fruity notes of black currant and blackberry surrounding a base of balsamic, forest scents. White floral notes top off this fragrance to add levity and brightness. Two base notes of synthetic musks contrast an animalic scent of the forest with a clean scent of sea breezes blowing in to dry off fresh sheets on the clothesline. Comments are:

• “Very fruity and pleasant!”
• “Very masculine!”
• “Very musky!”

The perfume was handcrafted in the barn in Robinhood with the highest quality of perfume ingredients. Those ingredients are: ethanol (denatured), fragrance, benzyl benzoate, limonene, linalool, linalyl acetate, Cetalox® (synthetic musk), Civettone (synthetic musk– the animalic one), triethyl citrate, and phenoxyethanol.