Have you ever drunk cinnamon milk? Milk, cooked with cinnamon, vanilla and sugar or honey? On a day like this one, rainy and stormy and grey, the perfect thing to do (I wrote the article in early February). Warming the body from within, giving a ridiculous happy feeling of total comfort. A tranquil harmony.
You can drink the milk, or smell “Lattedoro”. Next to the normal cinnamon milk ingredients there is also coconut mixed in. Maybe some nutmeg and ginger. Delicious.
A lot of people seem not to like cinnamon in perfumes, maybe because it is a very recognizable scent from the kitchen shelf. Sweet, bitter and spicey. Sometimes my perfumes have been criticised for a cinnamon note, when cinnamon was ranked 11th on a list of 11 ingredients, in descending order of strength. More than once my reaction was an indignant “there is no cinnamon at all in this perfume”! As always, truth in scents is a wide field. How often do I smell anis, when the description of a perfume does not mention a single word about it? But still, to some of people cinnamon is a weird smell in perfumes and they detect it 5 miles upwind.
There are those who prefer perfumes of the classic “Chanel No 5” kind. Aldehyde dreams that do not smell like anything one knows from nature. I do like them, there are wonderful scents among them. In general, though, I love the gourmand section with a combination of natural scents more.
Cinnamon is present in “Lattedoro”, prominent and unrepentant. The combination with coconut milk makes it incredible smooth and eatable. Actually, I would like to roll in that scent. What a brilliant idea to combine the two. It’s the only perfume with that combination in this intensity that I am aware of.
In Indian Ayurvedic medicine cinnamon is used to cure inner cold and nervosity. It is also said to help with lack of appetite. Coconut reduces stress and has cooling and balancing properties. Together they are seen to ground body and mind, when the air element is overpowering. And that is exactly what “Lattedoro” does. This very short ayurvedic excurse is pretty superficial and some of you might cringe. I will, at a later date, write a bit more about ayurveda in another post in the “Food for Thought” category.
In the Western world cinnamon seen as a scent strongly attached to Christmas time and childhood. Coconut we know in Europe and the USA as the embodiment of the Caribbean dream… Both also very soothing thoughts.
The colour and texture of the scent is a fine golden lace, of the highest quality.
Gabriella Chieffo is an Italian brand and I found them through a random search on the site dambiro. Since niche brands don’t do much advertising, you kind of have to stumble across them to realise that they are famous among those in the know. It’s like in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie quote about the Isla de Muerta: only those who already know where it is can find it. I bought “Lattedoro” according to the scent notes and the description on the dambiro site.
I checked Gabriella Chieffo’s website later, only after the scent was already in my hands and I was very happy. I realized then that she writes a short story to characterize each scent. A very mystical story in the case of Lattedoro, and absolutely not for me. It rubs me the completely wrong way. Crazy how directly a scent hits the brain and pictures form in our heads. Again and again, one sees that scents mean so very different things to each one of us. We all can love one scent and have really different pictures on our heads when we translate the smell to colours and texture and stories.
So what? The world of scents is free and open to everybody and many things can mean harmony and paradise. Wherever we find harmony and paradise, we should be happy about it and not ask too many questions.