The only possible reason why Annette Neuffer is not discussed in the same breadth as other talented, self-made European perfumers Andy Tauer, Vero Kern, Antonio Gardoni, etc. Her perfumes are as worthy of the intense fandom discussions that swirl around around Teone Reinthal or Zoologist.
A jazz musician living in Freising, Germany, she works completely in naturals, but with a deftness of touch that made even Luca Turin β famously a critic of all natural perfumers β marvel. Honeysuckle Rose is a fat but wilting white flower, a vine of jasmine or tuberose curling in on itself, buried in swathes of beeswax and furniture polish. It smells like sweet tea and nectar and female skin putrefying in a Southern heat so intense that you can almost see the beads of moisture popping up.
I smelled a honeysuckle bush once in the South of France and was shocked by how fleshy and sultry it actually is, in contrast to its rather innocent reputation. This perfume smells like honeysuckle in the air β heady, rudely floral, honeyed β but powdery and slightly dank on the skin, like a cup of over-stewed tea.
The oily cedar-like notes of a dank rosewood add to the impression of a flower floating in a gong bath, a flash of something white and delicate in the Vantablack gloom. It is only later, once the bitterness of the tea and woods has subsided, that Honeysuckle Rose reveals its final, true form β a sunny orange blossom busily licking the sticky grunge of beeswax and rosewood off its fur.
Rosa Alba is based around a rare, white Bulgarian rose varietal named, well, Rosa Alba rose of the dawn. It has simple but powerful beauty of a freshly picked rose from a wet garden, with its alluring mixture of lemon zest, geranium leaf, and finally, a trembling, jellied, pink rosewater loukhoum nuance tucked deep into the tightest folds near the heart. A resinous, powdery slightly sour sandalwood is the only other element here, lending the fragrance the feel of a traditional Indian attar.
