Rostracto

Where most roses are served to you in a porcelain vase, Rostracto comes in smoke and splinters. This isn’t the wet garden bloom the world thinks it knows, this is the rose as refracted through charred cedar, resinous fir, and moss pulled straight from the forest floor.

I’ve been working with rose in one form or another for years, and there’s a point where you stop chasing the “perfect” flower and start distilling its essence into something altogether different. The kind of rose you don’t meet in daylight. The kind that shows up after midnight, uninvited, carrying a faint scent of burnt wood on its coat.

Fir balsam absolute lays down the first shadow, a green-resinous hush that’s as much cathedral incense as it is conifer grove. Artemisia slices through with its bitter-green sting, the herbal edge that keeps the sweetness honest. Then oakmoss (my anchor) comes in like damp velvet, wrapping everything in that unmistakable chypre gravity.

The rose absolute here is not singing solo. It’s been coaxed into duet with benzoin resin, sweet yet medicinal, until the two are inseparable. Charred cedar drifts through the middle distance, a reminder of fires long extinguished, the smoke caught in old beams and weathered wood. By the time the musk rises, it’s all low light and warm skin, like the memory of someone’s presence hours after they’ve gone.

If you’ve ever tried to paint a rose without painting a rose; to break it down into planes, shards, glints, and shadows, you’ll understand what Rostracto is about. It’s a cubist rendering in scent: familiar enough to recognize, abstract enough to haunt you.

Fragrance Notes: Rose Absolute, Fir Balsam Absolute, Artemisia, Oakmoss, Benzoin Resin, Charred Cedar, Musk