Gold Knight
Kilian (2017)

The movements to Gold Knight could be described like a tempo instruction for a piano player – honey, honey, patch, anise, honey, patch, patch, hay! The strands of the music seem very separate at first - there is a brief moment at the start when all you smell is a whipped honey product, pale and moussey, and the next all you can smell is the pungent mustiness of a patchouli so earthy you suspect it comes decked out with a full 1970s bush. The minty anise flips the switch here, drawing out the booze and the rich, immortelle-like grassiness of the patch, and roughing up the honey with its weird medicinal edge.

I am not sure about the anise, to be honest, at least not at first. It almost smells too spicy, like those really strong varieties of mint or basil that taste like Scandinavian licorice. There is also a strong aftershavey undertone to it for the first hour, which puts me off. But eventually it mellows out into an aromatic, anisic whole – a grassy patchouli, with hints of dark chocolate, smelling for all we know like tobacco.

For a honey-themed fragrance from the same brand that did Back to Black, I am surprised (and encouraged) by the absence of baby powder and cheap sweets. The honey remains strongly present throughout, but there’s not a hint of either syrup or dried saliva; it is a rich but light and true take on the note. That anise is key to everything. It makes everything smell like the aromatic undergrowth along a meadow, half-green, half-burnt gold. Gold Knight is an aromatic, quite dark or roughened patchouli, against which the ‘ochre’ notes of hay, honey, and minty herbs flicker like sudden shafts of sunlight. It is quite a simple, monolithic smell until you put your nose directly up against your skin and you smell a golden liqueur, like a shot of mead.

Maybe it's my skin chemistry, but I get a near carbon copy of Creed's Royal Oud, with a powdery twist.

I'll definitely take the Creed, every time.

This does not smell like Chergui. Honey Patchouli, slightly Aromatic . In the Givenchy Pi genre.

I read another review that said this was somewhere in between Back to Black and Tobacco Vanille, which I very much agree with.

The opening is dominated by honey but there's also a cool, foodie smell, kinda like mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Strong projection and lasts all day.

Honey and patchouli were the first notes I detected when sampling this. As MOTW mentioned, Chergui was the first thing I told the SA this reminded me of.

Very nice. I get lots of honey with some nice patchouli in the base. Something about this reminds me of Chergui but not as sweet!