The other night, I was talking with friends, and for the first time this year I heard crickets in the garden outside. I said, “Wait, are those—?”, and a friend cut in, “Don’t say it!” She knew I was going to say the crickets’ chirping was a sign that autumn was coming. None of us wanted to admit it. Seemingly overnight the slant of the light has changed. Mornings are cool, although afternoons can still drive you to seek shade. The air smells different. It’s a bittersweet time of year because it is so beautiful but so short and signals that months of cold rain are around the corner. Those heartbreaking few days bridging the warm luxury of summer and the woodsmoke-tinged air of fall are to me what Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Chyprée feels like.

Andy Tauer, the founder and nose behind Zurich-based Tauer Perfumes, describes Une Rose Chyprée as “an oriental rose on a chypre base”. He lists its notes as rose damascena, bay, cinnamon, bergamot, lemon, clementine, green Bourbon geranium, labdanum, oak moss, patchouli, vetiver, and vanilla. In the initial announcement about Une Rose Chyprée earlier this year, Tauer said that each 15 ml bottle of the Eau de Parfum contains one pound of steam-distilled rose petals as well as rosa damascena absolute.

The rose in Une Rose Chyprée isn’t the full, fruity, blown rose of summer, but a darker, spicier rose joined by juicy citrus and definite cinnamon…

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