Christmas Smells: A Purely Biased List of Favorites, PART ONE

I'm not one for seasonal strictures--I'm dressed in white as I type this--and when it comes to fragrances, I find that I wear the ones I love all across the calendar. Still, scent is associative, and no time evokes specific memories around smell more than Christmas.

The fragrances I love to rediscover during this holiday aren't always the usual suspects; certainly not often the flankers intended to conjure a fantasy feast of gingerbread and fruitcake. My favorites scatter the elements of Christmas like a cubist painting, approaching the subject from a variety of angles simultaneously. They parcel Christmas out into bits and pieces of sensory memory, rendering them with photographic detail. Theoretically, I'd have to wear these fragrances all at once to get the bigger picture. In reality, they only work separately, one at a time, demonstrating how complex and textured the memories surrounding holidays are. Forty Christmas seasons have accrued a dense system of overlapping triggers. The following are the tip of the icicle.

New Haarlem (Bond No. 9)

There are several good coffee-centered scents in my cabinet (Ava Luxe Cafe Noir and A*Men Pure Coffee, to name a few). New Haarlem is something of a curiosity among them. While the coffee note is unmistakable, it tends to be much more impressionistic, depicting not just the steaming cup but the mood of the breakfast table conversation. As it wears, New Haarlem becomes slightly spicy, with interesting undertones of amber.

Ambre Fetiche (Annick Goutal)

Ambre Fetiche is a deeply resonant mixture of resins and leather (birch tar, maybe?). It lasts and lasts, and lasts some more. This is a slowly collapsing, intermittently crackling pile of resinous logs left burning in the fireplace, viewed through the frosted glow of nighttime windowpanes.

Nuit de Noel (Caron)

Christmas is the smell of things stewing, simmering, and roasting. So what's with all the marzipan? Nuit de Noel is that rare seasonal fragrance, which bypasses sweet tooth for smoked savory and mixed nuts. That would be wood smoke and hazelnuts, and mingling somewhere within is the combined effect of all the settled-in perfumes worn by the women of the house.

L'eau (Diptyque)

The pomander hanging over the dinner table, distributing the aroma of clove, fir branch, orange oil, cinnamon, and dried rose in all directions. Approaching religious experience, it manages to insert the mood of Christmas Eve cathedral (those vast, vaulted ceilings and a Christmas tree the size of Rockefeller Center) into the dining room.

Wrappings (Clinique)

While not technically a seasonal release, Wrappings is sold only at Christmas. You get a 30 ml bottle with perhaps an equally modest tube of lotion. Forget the lotion, and buy the gift for yourself. This stuff is Ormonde Jayne Woman writ in neon the colors of pine tree and holly berry. Where Woman is warm, sleepy-eyed, and twilit, Wrappings is blinding bright and bracing cold. Woman is a solitary walk along a forest trail. Wrappings is a party in the snow. Mace, artemisia, cedar, and moss go the expected places. What veers Wrappings down an unknown path is the steep cocktail of cyclamen, jasmine, rose, carnation, and orris, electrified by aldehydes. The overall effect is as exhilarating as a snowball fight deep in the woods.

Minuit de Messe (Etro)

I get confused when people go on about this one's gothic prowess, as if it were all dungeon stone and incense smoke. It must be my chemistry, or my nose. Messe has always been user-friendly for me, a mellow, resinous incense. There's a wonderful zest of citrus up top, which takes its time leaving. Upon its departure, frankincense and amber move to the center of the picture. Truly a midnight mass, materializing a dim cathedral full of well-dressed men, women and children, all buzzing with barely contained, drowsy excitement under a veneer of respectably somber supplication.

Gaultier2

There's too much dissonance in there to dismiss this as a sweet-shop essay on all things cake and cookie. "Woodsy notes" are listed in the pyramid, along with amber, musk, and an admittedly ubiquitous vanilla. This doesn't begin to get at the weird play of contrasts in Gaultier2. It's a dividing fragrance. Some find it saccharine. I find it has just the right touch of Barbasol. There's enough five o'clock shadow and tobacco in there to complicate the picture. One of the few fragrances to remind me of the men hanging out on the periphery of the Christmas festivities. Simultaneously robust and laid-back.

Anne Pliska (Anne Pliska)

Somewhere between Shalimar's citrus petrol and Obsession's electric spice, Anne Pliska's signature scent strikes the perfect balance between edible and inedible on the oriental continuum. Abundantly tranquil, like a half-recalled moment of a forgotten Christmas day, where the chatter of family and the steady rustle of gift wrap evolved into a quiet, subtle hum, clearing your mind to unnoticed pleasures, scents from the kitchen you hadn't been able to smell through all the noise.

Agent Provocateur (Agent Provocateur)

Roses are really the last thing the holidays bring to mind, yet despite all its comparisons to rose chypres past, Agent Provocateur manages to evoke the season in a way none of its predecessors did. It's probably the saffron up top, the cedar down below, and the vetiver somewhere in between, which situate the florals in the sweet but boozy territory of spiced rum cake, an aroma ascertained through elaborate plumes of cigarette smoke.

Cinnabar (Estee Lauder)

Truly a classic. Woozier then upright Opium, this oriental has dipped into the punch bowl with a little more abandon. You can smell the fermented fruit on its breath, and its fuzzy state of mind is palpable from the other side of the room.

Noel au Balcon

I get pretty weary of the slams directed at Etat Libre D'Orange. The more time I spend with this line, the more I appreciate its artistry and quality. Even it's most ostensibly mainstream (i.e. throwaway) fragrances, like Don't Get Me Wrong, Baby (I Don't Swallow), offer riches worth revisiting. The sense of humor is refreshing and conversational. Why is it that we can laugh at the unintentionally silly and overblown ad copy of estimable houses like Guerlain, while faulting Etat for its open sense of the ridiculous? Why is it we don't bat an eye at horsey Hilary Swank writhing in the cosmos for Insolence, but decry the squirting penis of Secretions Magnifiques, as though the latter weren't the subliminal thrust of the former laid bare? In an industry which serves no higher goal than the bottom line, releasing only what has been test-marketed to death, what exactly is the beef with a house whose nerve is prodigious enough to push boundaries in the form of a fragrance like Secretions Magnifiques? I find it hard to take Etat's detractors seriously.

Noel au Balcon is a subtle inversion in some ways of the seasonal release. Key word release here, as indicated by the stuffed corset of the perfume's accompanying illustration. Noel au Balcon takes the dense cakey comfort food of Five O'Clock au Gingembre and turns it on its nose with perfectly judged touches of cistus and red pepper. It truly evolves on the skin, from sweet to salty, maintaining an interesting floral backbone throughout. Apply it before you meet the family. It will linger until you leave with mandatory leftovers. It has far more gravity than its brethren.

Une Rose

The only other Christmas rose for me. This one is straightforwardly rose, but its wine dregs hint at that half dark, half jolly place the right kind of holiday party can take you. This is rose as high drama--moody, like the emotional baggage you bring to the Christmas table, a state of mind where a butter knife can look like more of a weapon than you ever had cause to notice before. A scent like Une Rose makes all the trivial resentments and longings teased out by the holidays seem as majestic and impertinent as classic opera performed in combat boots.

A Tribute to Diptyque L'Eau Trois

Diptyque L'Eau Trois is the best myrrh focused fragrance I have ever sniffed.

Somehow I managed to buy a bottle of L'Eau Trois many years ago before I was even a full fledged Scent Junkie, in fact, I still have my first bottle, with only about 15% remaining. L'Eau Trois has been around since 1975 and I probably stumbled across it in the mid-90's. I have lived in fear of it's discontinuation ever since. And now that terrible day has dawned...L'Eau Trois is discontinued.

I have a few other myrrh/resin focused fragrances; Annick Goutal Myrrhe Ardente, Laura Tonatto Amir, Etro Messe de Minuit, the CdG incense series and to a lesser extent L'Artisan Passage d'Enfer, but none of these are as good as L'Eau Trois. I'm serious, I really think L'Eau Trois is the holy grail of myrrh fragrances. The discontinuation of this pains me.

Myrrh seems a difficult scent to get right. As much as I love Annick Goutal fragrances, Myrrhe Ardente was a let down, it mostly smells of root beer. In my book, fragrant myrrh needs to be resinous, woody, herbaceous, incense-y and only barely sweet. Most other myrrh fragrances are actually amber scents with too much vanilla frosting. L'Eau Trois is so perfect, it's as if I wrote a letter to Diptyque asking them to create an exquisitely dry (dry as a bone) scent, with loads of herbs, woods, spice, incense and barely a drop of something sweet just to make it a perfume one can wear in public.

Rustic is a word that comes to mind when I smell L'Eau Trois. It's a rustic, natural, earthy, sappy smell. I think of tree sap - gooey and golden. Thyme and rosemary are prominent notes - which I adore - it's not very often you smell these herbs in perfume. And there's also a coniferous (pine) quality to L'Eau Trois. The scent of L'Eau Trois is so balancing, centering and idyllic it seems the perfect antidote to a stressed individual. Diptyque suggest that L'Eau Trois is meant to capture Northern Greece. I've never been to Northern Greece, but if it smells like this, I would love to visit and stay for awhile. Having recently moved to the southwestern United States, I find a striking similarity with the smells here in the high desert. Perhaps this is why I've been craving L'Eau Trois and brooding over it's discontinuation.

I think of L'Eau Trois as an uncompromising perfume renegade. She doesn't smell of flowers or vanilla or citrus or fruit like the vast majority of fragrances. In my mind, L'Eau Trois is Amelia Earhart, a pioneer who has left us before her time.

The nose behind this fragrance is Serge Kalouguine. Notes are: rosemary, myrrh, myrtle, oregano, cistus labdanum, pine, laurel, and thyme.

The First Ten Scents That Pop Into My Head (AKA Top Ten Fall Scents)

1. Delrae Bois de Paradis: This one has the depth and the melancholy of an Andrew Wyeth painting; specifically, Christina's World. A field of grass with the texture and smell of soft hay warming under the sun. The house isn't so far up the hill, but feels miles away. So where is the smell of stewed fruit coming from? “You can lose the essence by detailing a lot of extraneous things," Wyeth explained. There's nothing extraneous about Bois de Paradis. Everything about this perfume is in accord. Lucky Scent aptly describes the fragrance as "ripe and nectarous, its dark sweetness enhanced and perfectly balanced by woods." The rose is indeed honeyed, as they say, and transformed by the influence of fig. Bois is beautiful but a bit lonely, sitting out by itself in a field with its back to you. You can't see it's face but you know there must be a wistful expression on it. Every time you open the bottle, you hope to get to the bottom of something so impossibly lovely. To wear it is to accept defeat in exchange for nirvana. It all makes a little sense when you learn Michael Roudnitska created the fragrance. Its Spring sister would be Debut.

2. Etro Messe de Minuit: Maybe you're out and about in some European village, trying to navigate the serpentine byways of its ancient streets. You don't understand a word people are saying. Why are they all screaming, anyway? Their incessant chatter, happy as it might be, starts to feel like pepper spray. You haven't heard anyone speaking your language in more days than you can count. No one seems to register your presence, let alone acknowledge your existence. Even the birds seem hostile, lined in rows atop the roofs of the tall buildings you pass. It sounds as if they're laughing at you. Everything feels too big and too wide, you need a sense of scale, so you head into a modestly sized cathedral up the road. The moment you step in, you feel better. It isn't that you're particularly religious, not at least in the way most people seem to be, but the stone walls of the building bring all the sound down to a measure you can handle, giving everything a dulcet baritone edge, as if up close, whispering in your ear. The place is quiet and still and makes you feel as it's wrapped its arms around you. A priest approaches, swinging a thurible with a slow, rhythmic insistence. Its incense wafts in billowing circles, creating a heady cloud around you.

3. Gucci EDP: A strangely happy, slightly balsamic jasmine, very light on the indole, though enough is there you won't forget it. Gucci wears wonderfully, with a curiously insidious sillage. The big glass chunk of a bottle is something a heroine out of a 1940s women's picture might have hit some poor lug over the head with, or thrown at a wall in a glamorous pique of anger, or both. Gucci grafts an old fashioned sensibility to a decidedly modern construction, presenting a new wave beauty in a pleated satin cocktail gown. I'm not going to make excuses for it's failure to be the most revolutionary scent you've ever held to your nose. Not everything should be exceptional simply by virtue of its brilliance. Some things stand out because they get pretty or precarious just right.

4. Guerlain Mitsouko: Mitsouko might not warm the skin, but it certainly warms the heart. This fragrance is quite simply one of the best ever. If you still persist in believing otherwise, whether it happens to be your thing or not, you might want to check into that problem you're having with your barometer.

5. Bond No. 9 H.O.T. Always: It has nothing to do with burning leaves or a crackling fire, but the camphoraceous effect of this Bond No. 9 winner has a solar intensity that will set flame to your senses, and probably frighten any nearby horses. It's been compared to Givenchy Gentleman, and the comparison fits, though H.O.T. has more cinnamon and a marked shortage of Gentleman's rose. H.O.T. is no gentleman. Rather more of a beast. It's a loud juice with a primal bent. It's got its claws out, ready to get messy with mixed metaphors.

6. Caron Third Man: This has got to be the loveliest masculine ever, or good enough that you forget the competition during the time you wear it. Jasmine for days, superimposed over one of those trademark Caron bases, a weirdly gourmand medley of vanilla and lavender. Women, please, wear it too. Everyone should. Oakmoss, vetiver, clove, coriander, bergamot. "Avant-garde but very accessible," says Caron, though why you should take their word for it after what they've done to Tabac Blond is open to debate. Inspired by the Orson Welles film directed by Carol Reed, Third Man is inexplicably gorgeous and supple where that character was shadowy and corrupt. Nothing fishy about the fragrance, and the 125 ml bottle can be had for a steal. Why for Fall? Think of it as the pillow you lay your head on as you watch the leaves turn out the window.

7. Donna Karan Signature: Oh, I know, this is the part where you write in to tell me Signature sucks. Have I lost my mind? Can my taste now be trusted? Will I be singing the praises of Britney Bi-Curious next? The real deal is, supposedly, Black Cashmere, or Chaos. Though I can't attest to the charms of Chaos, I will soon enough, having ordered it from Bergdorf's today--and yes, I do like Black Cashmere but rarely find myself going for it. Donna Karan Signature is a weird little thing, with some of Daim Blond's apricot suede charms. I don't know why I'm drawn to it as strongly as I am. It's a pretty straightforward, soft leather fragrance: some jasmine, some rose, some fruit, some amber. All I know is I spray it on before many other things in my cabinet which are sworn to be better--and it lasts at least twice as long as most of them. It even has the faintest whiff of toilet paper, and yet I'm in love. Who can account for these things?

8. Chanel Cuir de Russie: The leather to beat all leathers into sniveling submission, and with such a cool smile on its face as it cracks that fragrant whip. You can find many glowing remarks about CDR on the perfume blogs. If you're not already convinced of its loveliness, nothing I say will convert you. I don't have half its powers of persuasion. Oh well, more for me--as if the pint-sized bottle weren't enough to last into the following millennium.

9. Lanvin Arpege: I never grow tired of the strange directions this one takes on the skin, from sinus-clearing aldehydes to vetiver to tobacco by way of bergamot, neroli, and peach. Jasmine, rose, lily of the valley, ylang ylang, coriander, and tuberose. Without question, the destination is worth all the twisting peregrinations: sandalwood, vanilla, tuberose, that vetiver, patchouli, and styrax. It's all somehow ultimately smoky, and wears like a dream.

10: Estee Lauder Knowing: Mossy rose with an almost primeval feel to it, like something out of a forest with ten foot ferns and paw prints the size of of Cadillac Escalades in the mud. Which isn't to say it's barbaric or, you know, like the sweat off a caveman's whatnot. It's perfectly lovely, and even old fashioned to some extent; it's just that it doesn't smell like something your grandmother would wear and inflict upon you during the course of those holiday-long clenches to her bosom. It smells more organic, like some happy accident found growing under a long-forgotten tree stump.

And more, again off the top of my head: Bal a Versailles, Aimez-Moi, Polo, Une Rose, White Patchouli, La Mome, Fahrenheit, Fahrenheit 32, Comme des Garcons 2 Man, Dzing!, Claude Montanna Homme (Red Box), Patou 1000, Etro Shaal Nur, Kenzo Amour, Antique Patchouli, Kingdom, Opium, Cinnabar, Spellbound, La Nuit

Dandy of the Day: Crispin Hellion Glover

Some find it easy to dismiss him. He certainly gives them a headstart. To many his name has become synonymous with a litany of those adjectives reserved for the terminally idiosyncratic. Years ago, he took aim at David Letterman's head with his platform shoes and kicked his way out of the mainstream and into the margins. America knew him as the mesmeric goof-for-brains in Back to the Future, and the idea that he might not have been acting, might in fact be a genuine loose canon, made his mainstream audience more than a little uncomfortable.

Crispin Glover is one of the more fascinating actors to come out of the past few decades, mainly because he seems so out of step with the times. After various character roles throughout the eighties and nineties, he came to his own in parts which seemed to have been tailor made for his gifts. Willard, Bartleby, small but atmospheric bits for David Lynch, the Thin Man in Charlie's Angels. Ultimately, he came full circle, reuniting with Robert Zemeckis, the director of Back to the Future, in Beowulf.

He played Grendel, a role which in many ways presented a fascinating inversion of his painfully dweebish turn as Michael J. Fox's young father. Both were outcasts; each made a monster by his inability to fit in or gain control of his impulses or navigate the trecherous signposts of his destiny. Whatever you think of the movie as a whole, you can't say Glover isn't absolutely electrifying in it. During the course of his career he has written books, directed films (first What is It? More recently, It is Fine. Everything is Fine!) and traveled for speaking engagements which play more like vaudeville than book signings and question and answer sessions. Glover has smuggledthe avant garde into mainstream cinema and through mainstream cinema into the American living room.

Like his image, his cologne should be vintage, something from the fragrant yellowed pages of an out-of-print book. At night he might wear Etro's Messe De Minuit, a slightly oily incense recalling the damp stone walls of forgotten cellars and the ghostly suggestion of flowers once worn by the missing. He wouldn't pass up an opportunity to wear Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Zombi. Cinnabar, with its dusty cinammon (a crimson velvet pillow for the nose), would be a more arresting choice. Something about its spicy rich hypnotic quality, its fragrant whiff of port wine, slightly turned, seems in perfect keeping with his image.

This Week at the Perfume Counter. Special edition: La La Land

To those of you who live in big cities, the following will contain no surprises. I suspect people in New York and Chicago are accustomed to expertise at the fragrance counter. Here in Memphis, things are slightly different. You are pounced upon at Macy's; regarded suspiciously at Sephora. Perfumania sometimes stares coldly at you as if daring you to ask for one more smell strip. Only one store carries anything remotely niche: and only Bond No. 9, at that.

I spent the last week in Los Angeles, and while most of my time wasn't killed anywhere near the perfume counter, I did go to Barney's and the Luckyscent shop, and during these brief visits I felt like I was making up for a lot of lost time. My top priority was getting over to the Chanel boutique on Rodeo Drive. I'd read a lot about the Exclusives line, particularly Cuir de Russie. I heard it was like nothing else and wanted to verify that high praise. It was several days before I could get over there, and when I did, I had four travel companions in tow, none of them the slightest bit interested in perfume--at least, not in smelling it for hours on end.

Chanel was pretty close to the picture I'd imagined. Rich, portly men buying impossibly expensive trinkets for younger women, who pulled out credit cards as if to pay their own way but were intercepted by said men, who then explained that the bills all come to the same place anyway. One saleswoman held up a petite, quilted handbag, pricing it at 2400 dollars. There were two floors. The fragrance counter was stuck in the back near the door onto the parking lot. The Exclusives were lined up along a high shelf. The bottles are about 6 ounces, chunky things, with magnetized caps which snap shut with a strange gravitational suction. Cuir de Russie was everything I'd been told to expect, and more, and they were out of it, and wouldn't be getting any more until after I left town. I was given a miniature and, once it was determined I wouldn't be accessorizing, sent on my way. I did pick up a bottle of Antaeus before leaving. My friend Bard wrinkled his nose, delivering the usual verdict. "Cat pee."

Knowing the patience of my friends was quickly wearing thin, I raced down Rodeo, first to Lalique, then to Dior. Versace was a bust. Inside, someone stated that Versace only made two colognes and when I asserted otherwise he stared at me as if he might call security. Two enormous Arab women with cheap hair squiggies took up most of the room at Lalique, asking questions which sent the sales staff running around in circles to find prices and check stock and dry the sweat under their arms in the privacy of the back room. It won't surprise you to know they left without purchasing anything. I suspected they'd done this many times, but, when they do spend money, they throw it around like confetti at a wedding.

The exasperated woman who ultimately helped me wore a skirt she probably doesn't do a lot of bending over in, and her hair was piled high on her head artlessly. The effect was very chic, making me feel overdressed and under-dressed at the same time. They had one more bottle of the divine Encre Noir, a peppery, grungy vetiver which is Guerlain's vetiver with a cigarette in its mouth, a bit of a hangover, and a big, boozy, let's screw this very minute look on its face. Dior is one long row of a place. with the clothes off to one side, threatening to gang up on you. Luckily, the fragrances are on the other side, where you instinctively rush for refuge. Eau Noire is similar to Annick Goutal's Sables, though I didn't recognize it until I got home to Memphis. Of the three masculines in this Slimane trio of special issues, it smelled the best, at least at first. Later, I smelled something incredible and found that it was Bois D'Argent, which I'd sprayed on my other wrist and lost interest in instantly. Now it smelled richer and deeper and kept evolving in ways that surprised me.

As we left Rodeo I spotted an Etro store, and wished I'd insisted on going in. I made a mental note to return, but it was several days before I could get back. The next day, I was again in the area, but after my extended trek down Rodeo I was given the option of one shop and one shop only, and the obvious choice was Barneys, where I could kill many birds with one stone. As we entered, my friends disappeared--to me at least. I'm sure they were still there. They might have been standing in front of me, waving bloody stumps where their arms had once been. All I saw was Serge Lutens and L'Artisan, Yosh, Strange Invisible Perfumes, S-ex, Baghari, Iris Nobile, and fill in the blank.

A dark-haired woman with an accent I took to be French approached and, ascertaining my familiarity with perfumes, went right to the good stuff. After spending several minutes with her, I realized she wasn't trying to push anything on me, and she knew the answer to almost every question I had. When I expressed my appreciation, she explained that she isn't in sales. A specialist, her only real job is to know what she's talking about.

She even had her own opinions, based on personal taste rather than sales figures. She had no interest in Baghari (I loved it) and, to her, the only outrageous thing about Outrageous was how synthetic it smelled. She convinced me to buy Daim Blond. I needed no help when it came to Iris Nobile and Bois de Paradis. The former is rich (I bought the EDP) and robust. Bois de Paradis is nutty and grassy and lists among its notes French Rose, Cinnamon, Blackberry, and Fig. It smells incredible; to this nose, the best of the Delrae line. The specialist gave me eight small decants to take with me. Among them: Arabie, Noir Epices, and Baghari.

Days later, when I made it over to Etro, I was less than enthused. Expensive clothes don't impress me; even with dangly, flashy things hanging off them. Yes I like your pants. I'm even vaguely intrigued that you paid several thousand dollars for them, but only because I'm imagining how much perfume I could buy with that kind of dough. It impresses me even less when you treat your small but somewhat impressive line of fragrances as if they were trifles you hand out as free gifts with purchase, ugly things cluttering your counter's real reason for being.

They had no tester for Messe de Minuit and had no intention of opening one. They only really sell it at Christmas, they said, as if I had the nerve to think of it out of season. They were gracious enough to let me smell a dust-laden candle, then laughed openly at me when I shipped my purchase back home to me. "You're sending it to yourself?" the salesman snickered. "Why yes," I said. "Should I send it to someone else and have them forward it to me instead?"

In case you're wondering, Messe de Minuit is sublime, an incense as true to its name as the Comme des Garcon line, it adds to their dry iterations a fantastically resinous quality, giving you both smoke and source.

The rest of the week was fairly dry, until I discovered, my last day in town, that the Luckyscent Scent Bar was a mere two blocks from where I was staying. Obviously, I raced right over. By the time I left, I had purchased five bottles of perfume. I returned from my car to buy one more. The saleswoman was polite and informative but decidely remote, as if she'd left the oven on at home. She answered my questions patiently but in such a way that the patience I required was made clear. I told a few jokes and she laughed, so I know she wasn't talking in her sleep. For a while I wasn't sure. I got to smell things I'd only read about, like most of the Parfumerie Generale line, Eau D'Italie, Heeley, Kilian, and others I forget. There were so many to smell. No wonder the saleslady was out of it.

I left with Heeley Fine Leather, Sienne L'Hiver, Les Nereides Patchouli, Un Crime Exotique, and Cedre Sandaraque. I returned a few minutes later for Washington Tremlett's Royals Heroes 1805 (I'd mailed everything else home. I needed SOMETHING for the plane trip).