Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Baobhan Sith

Baobhan Sith is one of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab‘s more veteran general catalog scents. Discontinued in 2005, it came roaring back the next year with its tart, grassy citrus and tea scent. This is a well-loved BPAL with excellent longevity and a great fresh, clean personality. Baobhan Sith

In Bottle: Tartness with the mild sting from citrus. I get the slightly astringent white tea as well. Baobhan Sith is a very white, very clean and fresh fragrance. Reminiscent of grassy knolls and ethereal mists. This is a fragrance that makes me think of teatime and, for some reason, cranberries.

Applied: Initial flair of citrus, a very normal thing for me as it seems, before the grapefruit says it’s had enough of me and decides to recede into the background. The white tea is the real star in this fragrance as it dominates for the better part of the scent’s wearable lifetime. There is a very, very mild bite of ginger in this as the fragrance ages, the white tea mellows out and the ginger gets its time in the sun. Fresh, citrus, clean with a really (I mean it) light touch of ginger to round it all out.

Extra: Baobhan Sith (pronounced, “Bow-Vahn Shee”), heralds from Scottish mythology where beautiful women in green dresses wander the mists as bloodsucking vampires.

Design: Similar in design to many other general catalog scents from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. The oils are stored in an amber bottle with a twist black cap. The label is printed with the house name and fragrance name.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Citrus

Notes: Grapefruit, white tea, apple blossom, ginger.

Baobhan Sith is great as a wearable fragrance but also a good room scent if you feel like diluting it a bit in water and letting an oil diffuser do its work. BPAL  fragrances are perfume oils, meaning they are not set in an alcohol base and are therefore unsuitable to be sprayed. Should one attempt to spray perfume oils, they will be met with a drooling, uncooperative stream, and a broken sprayer nozzle. To use BPALs as a spray perfume, you’ll have to find an alcohol base to dilute the perfume in first. You can find perfumer’s alcohol in specialty stores online.

Reviewed in This Post: Baobhan Sith, 2009, 5ml Bottle.


Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Aglaea

Here’s the thing with Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (BPAL). It’s got a fragrance library that numbers into the thousands and is still growing to this day. It’s got a huge following with a huge set of fragrances spanning every single fragrance family you can think of and everyone reacts and has a slightly differing opinion of every fragrance because the oils smell different on everybody. This entire blog could be dedicated to just smelling and seeking out the entire BPAL library. But that’s a monumental task. What better place to start than with a very simple, very well-loved bottle of Aglaea?

Aglaea is a fruity, peachy, crystal clear and unfettered scent that brings simple joy to the table and all it expects back is the admission that, yes, it does smell like peaches. Aglaea

In Bottle: Sweet peaches with a very golden base and that slightly resinous scent mixed together. The musks must be very clear in this because I just can’t detect them at all. Myrtle seems like a lost cause because all I can detect in this is a very golden peach scent.

Applied: The peaches flare up as fruit notes tend to do and then promptly take a backseat (quite characteristically) to the golden amber that takes center stage. If you’re looking for a complex peach scent that melds into woods and morphs into a bouquet of florals or fruits, Alaea will sneer. It’s simple, and it asks to be kept that way to the point where I don’t even care to look for the musk, though there is something very slightly “real” about this. Real as in, it’s trying to tell me I’m smelling white musk. Something clean and complimentary.

Extra: Aglaea was the youngest of the three graces. Married to Hephaestus and spent most of her days prancing in green fields and being in famous sculptures and paintings such as Primavera by Sandro Botticelli.

Design: I can’t say much for most BPAL bottles as they do tend to look the same with varying labels. You can see in the photo that it’s a very unassuming amber bottle with a plastic cap and a gothic-esque printed label. That’s really all it needs.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Peach, myrtle, amber, musk.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is a young fragrance house that I can’t exactly file in the niche category. It sort of defies explanation in some ways so I prefer to call them a small and independent operation. Most of Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs’ fragrances are available on their website for $17.00 a bottle. Aglaea is a part of BPAL’s general catalog scents and is, therefore, generally expected to stick around in the foreseeable future. BPAL also comes out with limited edition scents.

Reviewed in This Post: Aglaea, 2009, 5ml Bottle.