Cacao
Aftelier

If you’ve ever melted really dark, 80% cocoa bars of chocolate to make a cake or sauce, then you’ll be familiar with its pungent, almost animalic smell. The smell is not creamy or sweet, rather it greatly resembles the inky flatness of indole, mold, and the iron-rich smell of fresh blood. I am always searching for a perfume that truly captures those less “pretty” aspects of dark chocolate, and while Noir de Noir and T Bond come close, this is the first scent that I’ve smelled that captures it in its totality. It smells rich, truly black, and disturbingly like iron tonic.

If there is something I like better than dark chocolate, then it is the trashy charm of orangettes, Jaffa cakes, and Terry’s Chocolate Orange. Here a bright tangerine or orange note (similar to the headlights-switched-on sunniness of the citrus in Oud Luban) illuminates the dark chocolate and puts me in mind of those orangey, chocolate-y treats. And yet, the accord is not yummy in a gourmand manner because Mandy has cleverly paired the moldy, indolic smell of melted dark chocolate with an impressively fecal jasmine, ripe with its own indoles. The notes feed off of each other, and the chewy, inky purple floral weaves an inedible note into the mix, saving it from gourmandise.

I really love this stuff, and it shoots straight to the top of my favorite inedible gourmands list. Lush and pretty damn filthy, I recommend this to lovers of T Bond by Sammarco and Isvaraya by Indult (if only for its rather dirty, plummy jasmine note).

This is so much fun! It really pervades the room. UK members at least will be familiar with Terry's Chocolate Orange. Well, Cacao is nothing like that. Close to where I live we have "The Chocolate Cafe", which sells among other things a wide range of hot chocolate to drink on the premises. To get the effect of Aftelier's Cacao, you would have to order a dark chocolate drink with orange oil - a much more appropriate comparison. I see there is jasmine among the notes, again, and this works well for at least two reasons: first it counterbalances the heavier and potentially more cloying notes; second, it makes the overall effect more abstract and prevents it from smelling like spilt hot chocolate. I really like this one.

I've tried this several times and each time I get a nice blood orange scent, which immediately turns to bubblegum powder and stays that way for the duration of the perfume. Perhaps it is the jasmine, but it smells exactly like that flour and sugar mix that they put on the outside of those hard pink retro bubblegums to keep them from sticking to the wrapper.

I unfortunately don't get any chocolate.

This starts off as a bit of fun. Yes, orange and chocolate are a natural pairing. My first instinct is play, however, I anticipate this will become terribly cloying as perfume. Working all day with chocolate can be a stomach churn.
In this case the Chocolate and Vanilla step back as the Jasmines combine and step forward to provide the bulk of the story.
The Citrus and Chocolate, set in the background canvas, counterpoint each other and seem to tone down the (feral)animalic and gas of the Jasmine.
Very Pretty and Feminine.

Orange-blasted bubblegum, made sparkly and effervescent somehow, over musky YooHoo chocolate-flavored drink. This reminds me of Jo Malone's Blue Agave & Cacao, but richer and oilier. I appreciate that this is sweet without being just another stereotypical marshmallow gourmand, but it's just not what I'm into.

This smells just like a Terry's Chocolate Orange, with something dark & animalic lurking beneath. That may be the jasmine, but I don't get anything overtly floral here. Three hours in, it takes on a distinctly metallic edge, which makes me suspect the presence of neroli, but otherwise there's little development, & it lasts for over seven hours.
I am not a fan of chocolate in perfume, & so I am not surprised that this one isn't for me. Someone else mentioned the cloyingly sticky fingers & faces of little children in association with it; a nauseating image that only adds to my sense of revulsion.