“Ciocomenta” is a fresh fragrance, with a clear, almost sharp mint note at the start (as if the mint was mixed with grounded pepper). The mint is dominating all the time, closely followed by pure, unsweetened cacao or dark chocolate. The two scent notes combine very well, the taste of a fresh mint chocolate (where the mint is in little pieces melted in the chocolate, not as a cream) is what describes the overall sensation best.
According to the Sulmona Essenza website, also iris and vetiver were used to create “Ciocomenta”. The FRAGRANTICA platform even adds almond. The latter cannot be distinguished and might have been added because the general fondness of Sulmona Essenza for almonds is well known. Mint and pure cacao/dark chocolate dominate. The perfume does become softer after a while, the dark chocolate moving to the background and the mint becoming more like in a mint cream. The once famous sweet “After Eight” comes now into mind.
The colour of “Ciocomenta” is a creamy blueish white, representing freshness.
The perfume is perfectly usable on a very hot day; it cools the wearer down and gives back some liveliness and sparkle when the sun burns everything.
There are some niche brands from Italy that are very different from all those other brands around. Their creators were born and live in small towns somewhere far off the common tourist tracks. These brands produce a few perfumes only and do not crave to grow too much and to become a household name. They are firmly based in their original hometown, often using the name of that town in the perfume brand’s name.
One of them is Sulmona Essenza, based in the Abruzzo town of Sulmona. If you use a ruler and draw a line from Rome to the east coast of Italy, you cross through Sulmona in the province of L’Aquila. The Abruzzi mountains are notorious for their earthquakes. Videos of destruction and sadness often involve that region when it comes to nature disasters in Italy. Whilst the climate in the Abruzzi, where the city of Sulmona is located, is not as scathing as in other parts of Italy, naturally summers are hot and very dry.
Today Sulmona is a city of about 21.000 inhabitants. The glorious times of the city are long gone – the Roman poet Ovid was born in Sulmona and during the era of Friedrich II, the most famous of the Staufer emperors, named ‘Stupor Mundi’, the wonder of the world, Sulmona was a cherished town with a lot of administrative power. Those times gave Sulmona many beautiful buildings to behold.
In the 2010 movie “The American”, starring George Clooney, Sulmona plays a role, representing the quiet backyard of Italy in comparison to the tourist hectic we all know from the big cities. The city celebrates a classical Italian lifestyle not for tourists, but for inhabitants.
“Ciocomenta” is one of 4 perfumes by Barbara Traficante, the owner of Sulmona Essenza. It is not known if she worked with famous perfume masters to create her perfumes. The image film that can be seen on the website of Sulmona Essenza gives the impression the perfumes were all created by the owner herself, including the design of the bottles. This might well be the case, as the brand is a small one and the fulfilment of Barbara Traficante’s childhood dream.
The other three perfumes of the brand are more gourmand, all of them based on local sweets, as the legend goes. The sweets that Barbara Traficante loved and never found in a perfume before she created her own brand in 2008.
The exact launching year for “Ciocomenta” is not known. It seems there have been no new perfumes by Sulmona Essenza for a while, but as long as the old ones stay available and the quality does not diminish, we should be happy.
I have a lot of sympathy for the small niche brands based in small towns that their owners love. Those perfumes transport more of the local culture than a tourist guide ever will. They memorize historic moments, like all those traditional Italian sweets the children loved, long after those sweets became rare. This is only an example, based on Barbara Traficante’s image film on the website. To use perfumes to give a form to memories is one of the noblest things one can do, because perfumes reach the brain immediately. Through them, we can re-live beautiful, long-gone moments many times.