Sballo
Bruno Acampora (1977)

There is a dry, dusty barn where freshly cut antique roses are stored, by a straw bale garden and a meadow, where wild sage and pelargonium grows. It's windy and warm, a soft kiss of sunlight through wispy clouds. Sballo is a high, a trip, the euphoria that all has fallen into place just as it is meant to be. There is a sweet mustiness that feels so familiar, like an old relic that's been waiting forever for its new lease on life.

A mossy simmer, a hazy air over tilled earth, Sballo seems at first to smell like a 1970s chypre but then feels like a folk curative. It is at the junction of "some other time in the past" and "anytime, really, maybe even the future." Feral indoles and violet ionones percolate over spiced woods. It feels as comfortable as a favorite pair of brown corduroys, as textured as their wales.

Sballo means ‘trip’ in Italian. Not as in a ‘trip to the seaside’, but in the ‘I ate some funny-looking mushrooms and now your face is a rainbow’ sense of the word. Which is appropriate when you consider how mind-bendingly seventies the Acampora oils smell. Trippy, psychedelic, groovy – all words that fit the Acampora aesthetic like a glove.

Sballo is the banner-carrier for this seventies feel, so it goes heavy on the aromatics, hay, patchouli, and oakmoss. It ain’t pretty, but it sure does smell authentic. The main thrust is a patchouli-rose chypre in the Bernard Chant style. Think Aromatics Elixir and Aramis 900, but richer and rougher in texture. An artisanal, homemade take on a commercial model. The rose is brilliant and red, but smothered by armfuls of dry, rustic grasses and hay note acting in tandem with oakmoss and patchouli.

Most modern chypre scents fake the bitterness of oakmoss in the traditional chypre accord via other materials that share a similarly ashen dryness, like denatured patchouli aromachemicals (Akigalawood), hay, galbanum, or even saffron. But though there is no oakmoss listed for Sballo, I can’t imagine that it doesn’t actually contain at least some. To my nose, the shadowy dankness of the material is unmistakably present.

Sballo shores up this oakmoss effect by flanking it with equally dank or earthy-dry materials such as hay, clove, patchouli, and a material that smells like tobacco or black tea leaves. The overall effect is gloomy and desiccated in the grand rose chypre tradition. Saving it from a classic ‘ladies who lunch’ formality of the chypre is the rough, almost burnt-ashy texture of the moss and patchouli. It is like the rough, stubbled jaw of a brutish male thrust into your personal airspace, causing both discomfort and the thrill of secret excitement.

This is another gorgeous and dense fragrance from the Acampora line, and by dense, I mean DENSE. The hay and tobacco here are rich and thick and massively resinous, and I would love to smell it on someone else standing a few feet away. This dark chypre smells wondrously vintage, like something a glamorous brunette from the '30s or '40s would wear, and I would love to wear it myself if it didn't wear me. It goes on forever and its woodsy oak moss is stunning. It's simply too redolent and potent for me to wear without being overly conscious of it every second. If you love vintage scents that smell like you're standing in the middle of a hay field while wearing a deeply warm chypre with massive projection and duration, this is your baby.

Sballo is really perfumy, and I like it very much on first meeting. It manages to have that old-style chypre opening without getting shrieky. It's got quite a lot of rose, and something like a dried fruit (raisin or sultana) and some spiciness. It feels like the 1940s in my imagination for some reason - tailored suits and glamour. Now a couple of hours later, there's a softly spicy patchouli base (rather than the usual musk).

I have to admit it is a little bit old, from the first sniff to the dry down. But it is incredibly warm and enveloping. Longevity more than 8 hours. Finally the longevity I was looking for!

How is it possible to make Sballo in this day of oakmoss restrictions? Though it isn't listed as an ingredient, this fragrance has such an immediate dense, dark, rough oakmossy note, it took my breath away. True to the real deal, Sballo turned darker as it aged, lasting a good long while, that glorious ashy dark dry down of oakmoss. It was heaven to smell. All chypreholics still mourning the loss of the great vintage chypres will enjoy sampling Sballo. It may fill a hole for you as it has done for me.
I loved the original Fendi and Sballo has reminiscences of it though I don't have Fendi now for comparison. It brings to mind many other dark classic chypres, though the comparison matters little, except that it compares well to the memory of several I loved. What comes to mind are classic florals - rose, violet, orange blossom, geranium - embedded and glowing from a leathery oakmoss matrix; that feral roughness so different from animalics - oakmoss has a mind and is not driven by its hormones. That to me always made oakmoss in a fragrance more edgy. Oakmoss is never driven, it drives. If you've gone through the long slow chypre withdrawal, years in duration, as I have, this will be a pleasure to wear.
It has a restrained smoulder, the thing which beguiles me about classic chypres - the way these ashy, kind of rough, dark fragrances with submerged florals seem more compellingly sexy than their flirtier floral counterparts, the difference between a cashmere dress and red rayon ruffles. Sballo is refined, luxurious, cerebral, rich in notes, but tactful - a large component of tastefulness. I love the way classic chypres dress up and down so well and Sballo is no exception. Go for a walk on a raw October day in the forest, to a conference, on a date - it will do all of them well. It really is an admirable fragrance, chypre or not, but I especially recommend it for lovers of the classic chypres. I tried the oil - I heard the spray may be a little smoother.