Ramón Monegal – Dry Wood

Picture: Satureja Subspicata, Royal Botanic Garden Édinburgh
Photo by Peter Weis, (cc) Wikimedia Commons, some rights reserved

Dry Wood is a dark green, mossy, herbal, woody fragrance from Ramón Monegal. It’s a very potent creation and just two tiny spritzes are almost too much. But very light applied, Dry Wood offers an unusual experience and even if containing the usual cedary, peppery notes of contemporary woody perfumers gendered at the masculine side, Dry Wood highlights the note in a different way, somehow better blended.

Dry Wood starts with a blast of dark greenery over a woody backgound. Some full and rounded citrusnotes glimmering through and gives the introduction a spakle, just like the ray of light is shining through the treetops in a dense fir and pine forest a sunny autumnday. Dry Wood is really very dry and masculine in it’s charcter but anyway somehow wearable by a woman. In the heartnotes Dry Wood becomes rounder and almost soapy in style, like a green, herbal, mossy soap. When the fragrance dried down a little bit further, a slight almost liqueur-like note appears and lasts for quite a whlie. This is the only hint of something on the edge to sweetness in Dry Wood, the rest is non-sweet. In the basenotes, Dry Wood gets sharper again, woodier, with peppery elements but well embedded in the woody, mossy, herbal, dark green facets. The greeness is like that of the undergrowth in a swedish fir and pineforest during the autumn, moss, coniferus, humic, dry- and moisty grass, heather and hebal plants. An interesting ingredient in Dry Wood is satureja(savory), an herbal plant related to thyme and rosemary, which in Sweden is used to speice aquavit with, I havn’t seen that note used in perfume before, but I can smell some thymerelated notes in the blend.

As mentioned above, Dry Wood has the neutronbomb power in sillage and strength, in the same division as Montale Aoud Musk and Carner Barcelona Cuirs even if it smells differently. I have read opinions that reviwers think Dry Wood is onedimensional, but to my nose it is not, if (now I’m repeating myself again) applied very sparingly. Because a “normal” application of  4-5 spritzes almost ruins Dry Wood, the ingredients gets messy. I experienced this when Mr Parfumista tested Dry Wood, by mistake applying too much. Sillage is huge and the longevity for several days if not taken a sauna to sweat it out.

I think admiers of the bold herbal and mossy fragrances of the 80s and of contemporary fragranceas as Amoauge Opus V and Montale Wild Oud could appreciate Dry Wood. Even if not smelling the same, they conveys the same impression.

Rating: 3+ (a good fragrance but too masculine to me)
Rating: 5*)

*)Update February 2017: Dry Wood is a hidden gem which deserves a better rating. One have to see through the masculine a bit colognelike topnotes and wait for the rest, ie when Dry Wood unfolds in its intriguing dry fresh woody aromatic layers.

Notes: Citron, bay leaf, pepper, moss, sandalwood, cedar, cashmeran, amber, woody notes, satureja